


when hope is gone

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Austenland AU, F/M, Very Loosely Based, also they WORK at Austenland, it's over by the time the story starts but is mentioned several times, loosely based on Persuasion, so don't get too excited, warning for discussion of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-12-30 12:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21138920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Two years ago, Brienne Tarth chose to protect her heart, and she lost her best friend because of it. Now he's coming back to work at the Austenland resort where they met.She isn't anywhere near prepared to face him again.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The long-promised Austenland AU is finally here! Though I don't know why I keep calling it that, because they only WORK at Austenland! It's also very, very loosely based on Persuasion, kind of. I'm sure that clears things up. 
> 
> The actual real first chapter will be posted tomorrow. I wanted to post all of the flashback stuff in one chapter, but it's 8k, so I decided to split this bit off into a prologue!

The first time Brienne Tarth sees Jaime Lannister’s face in two years, it’s on a headshot in Sansa Stark’s hands.

Well. Maybe that’s dramatic. She has pictures of them on her phone, still. She may be putting off getting a new phone for that exact reason—downloading the pictures again would be too purposeful, but _keeping_ them on her phone is just circumstance, right? But the headshot is a new picture. One she hasn’t seen before. It _feels _like the first time seeing him in years. He has some stubble, and his golden hair is longer than it was, brushing his shoulders.

“Gods, just look at him,” Sansa says. “I can’t believe he’s coming back here for this season. I didn’t think he’d want to after he lost his hand. I can’t imagine our clientele will be very sensitive about it.”

Brienne can’t believe he’s coming back either, frankly. Her mouth goes dry just looking at him, and she can’t decide if it’s just the fact that he continues to be the most handsome man she’s ever seen, or if it’s fear at the thought of seeing him again.

“He probably owes your mother a favor,” she manages. She looks down at her notes. She has distractedly written Jaime’s name, followed by several very deeply etched question marks, written over several times in blue ink, as if to try and convey the intense amount of _what the fuck _she feels.

“Maybe,” Sansa says. “I saw him in that play his brother wrote. He’s quite good.”

Brienne murmurs something vaguely agreeing. She texted Tyrion only two months ago, congratulating him on the success. Jaime spent years being cast as a pretty boy villain with no real substance, and the play in which Tyrion cast him as the sympathetic lead was a major step for both of them. Jaime’s reviews had all been wonderful.

Brienne had considered lurking in the back of the theater, but she couldn’t make herself take the risk. 

“I’ll tell Jaime you send your regards,” Tyrion had texted back, which Brienne had not responded to. Tyrion said it every time they talked. Brienne doubted if he ever mentioned their texts to Jaime. If he did, Jaime never sent any well-wishes back. 

“He’s a good actor,” she says, trying not to sound as miserable as she feels. Remembering the way he had looked at her at that fucking dinner, the last time she spoke to him. The way he nervously kept picking up his fork and then putting it down. Wiping his palm on his jeans.

“And he’s _so_ hot. Like, seriously. Look at him. How is it possible he’s gotten hotter?”

Sansa turns the headshot around, and Brienne stifles a sigh as she takes it from her friend’s hands. It’s not Sansa’s fault she never saw Jaime and Brienne interact beyond the surface level interactions that they had every year behind the scenes at Austenland. Cat always intended this place as a family business, but she kept the kids out of it until they were old enough, no exceptions. Sansa especially; she’s too much a romantic, and she’s exactly the sort of person who would get tangled up in all this stuff. Feel too deeply. Start to believe it.

Just like Jaime. 

“He looks serious in this,” Brienne remarks. She picks out some gray at his temple. It makes him look more distinguished, but it doesn’t do away with any of the glittering good lookingness that he was always lamenting, claiming it cost him roles.

“Mum said you two used to be friends,” Sansa says. Her voice is too casual. She takes the headshot back and looks at it again. Brienne feels a quiet, concerned sense of...something. Protectiveness? But is it of Sansa or of Jaime?

“We shared an apartment in the off-season,” Brienne says. Her voice is very hoarse. She looks down at her hands. Why didn’t Tyrion tell her Jaime would be coming back? He should have warned her.

“What happened?” Sansa asks. Brienne thinks of the way he’d looked at her, after she said it. “_This is exactly what your sister said would happen_”. Shocked, like she had punched him.

“Drifted apart,” Brienne answers. She keeps her tone light. She shrugs. “You know how it is.”

“Mmm,” Sansa replies sagely. She tucks Jaime’s headshot under the rest of her notes. “Like me and Jeyne.”

The way he’d slammed the door when he left.

Tyrion’s text: _what did he do? He’s freaking out. _

Brienne’s text: _nothing. It’s okay. I’m okay. Tell him it’s okay. It isn’t his fault. _

Tyrion’s silence.

The slow realization over the next few weeks that Jaime wasn’t coming back.

“Right,” she says with a forced smile. Her scarred cheek itches, suddenly. Forcing her to remember. “Like you and Jeyne.”


	2. once so much to each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the prologue! This chapter is 8k and i'm very sorry for the length, but I wanted all of the flashback in one chapter!

The first thing Jaime Lannister ever says to her is “holy shit, you’re a woman”.

She’s standing in the stables at the time. Knee deep in hay. She’s still dressed in her chauffer uniform from earlier. She usually stays as strictly behind the scenes as possible, but Catelyn sometimes needs her to step up and fill a few additional roles, and chauffer is her favorite. Much better than being stuffed into one of those regency dresses to play the part of some unfortunate-looking spinster cousin. This uniform looks good on her, she thinks. Its long lines compliment her figure, and she likes the clean crispness of the pants and the shine of the boots.

Nothing about it is clean now. It’s rumpled and splashed with mud from the work she’s been doing. She stops in the action of jamming her pitchfork into the hay and looks at him. The beautiful new actor they’ve hired to join the ranks. She saw him earlier as she drove up to the house, with the clients for the week safely in the back of her carriage. He had seemed the kind of gorgeous that’s usually also dangerous, and her breath had caught. Her biggest shame is that she has always had a weakness for beautiful men. Most people do, but Brienne hides hers. What would people say? What would they think if they knew she craved men far too pretty for her to even _look_ at? It’s not like she ever hopes they’ll love her too, but she knows that wouldn’t matter. It would still look pathetic.

Jaime doesn’t look as beautiful now as he had earlier. He looks judgemental. Disbelieving as he eyes her nearly flat chest. She tore open her coat earlier to deal with the heat, and her thin white tank top is all she’s wearing beneath it. Her polka dot pink and teal bra is absurdly visible through it. She straightens to her full height, pleased to see that she looms over him in her boots. He gazes up at her, still grinning.

“Gods, you’re enormous,” he says. “I _was_ wondering who the giant driver was. You’re even bigger up close.”

“Did you need something?” Brienne asks. Her jaw is clenched. Her shoulders are tense. She knows that Catelyn worked hard to poach this absurdly pretty asshole away from his father’s own historical re-enactment company, and she won’t be the reason he decides to quit. Even if he _is _being a dick to her for no reason.

“Cat asked me to fetch you to her office,” Jaime says. “She said we should get to know each other. You’re to be my personal assistant until I get the hang of things.”

He grins at her, wider. Knowing already that she hates him. She begins to button her coat closed. No matter what he says, no matter how he acts, she won’t give him the satisfaction.

* * *

She lasts a whole ten minutes before snapping at him that he’s an idiot. He smiles back at her, and it’s like looking into the waters around her father’s house on Tarth. The glittering morning waves. Golden and beautiful. They had looked like that the morning Galladon died, and Brienne never trusted their beauty afterwards. Jaime feels like that, at first.

He’s exactly as spoiled as she thinks he is. He’s worked for his father for his entire adult life, and he has no idea how to operate in the real world. In some ways, he’s the perfect Austen hero. He feels like he was plucked from some distant time ago, befuddled by the modern world and things like rent and utility bills and grocery shopping. He gets oddly nervous any time they’re away from the manor. Like he’s always expecting something to go wrong.

He’s bizarrely _needy_, too. He likes to make fun of her, but any time she tries to walk away, he follows, baffled by her desire to escape him. She starts being brutally mean to him instead, trying to drive him off, but it only makes him like her more. He winks at her behind the backs of the customers he’s supposed to be wooing. He sneaks off to chat with her in the stables when he’s supposed to be playing his part. He’s constantly talking her up to Catelyn.

“Why did you even hire him?” Brienne asks after a few maddening days of this. “He’s a _wreck_.”

“He’s a decent man,” Catelyn says. “Once he’s out of the grip of his family. My sister…well, there’s some bad blood. I saw an opportunity to make it up to him. He wanted a way out of his father’s grasp, so I gave it to him.”

Brienne waits until later that night, tucked away in her bed in the servants’ quarters, to try and figure out what Catelyn means. People like the Lannisters don’t make a move in public without there being at least _some _record, but it’s even easier to find than Brienne imagined it would be. Lysa Arryn, Cat’s sister, served a stint in prison after the death of her husband was revealed to be the work of she and her lover, a childhood friend named Petyr Baelish. They’d been caught eventually because of some incriminating audio tapes of phone calls they shared, but they had almost successfully framed the beautiful Lannister twins for the murder.

Jaime is younger in the pictures Brienne sees online. He’s all savage, sharklike, his grin like a knife. His sister is his mirror. She’s softer in some places, and her smile is a perfect politician’s smile, but her eyes are wild, their green a burning brightness in her gorgeous face. Lysa and Petyr spread rumors of an affair between the twins to cast suspicion on them. Lysa alleged that Jon Arryn discovered the affair and that was why he was murdered, and people believed it. Why wouldn’t they? Jaime already had a terrible reputation after beating one of his father’s business associates half to death during an altercation. They were rich and beautiful. Cersei Lannister was set to marry Robert Baratheon, a rising star in the political world. The scandal came at the perfect time. People wanted to watch the Lannisters fall.

It was Tywin Lannister who leaked the Arryn-Baelish calls to the press. Not officially, of course, but it seemed like everyone knew it. Tywin didn’t take aspersions on his family’s reputation lightly, and he had enough money to bribe enough people until they were able to find something actionable.

_Bad blood._ Brienne almost laughs, reading all this on her phone on some cheaply designed conspiracy site, well after one in the morning. Catelyn was underselling it. The only surprise is that Jaime didn’t laugh in Catelyn’s face when she offered the job.

* * *

Brienne followed her heart to Austenland three years before she met Jaime, when she fell deeply in love with her friend Renly, even though she knew almost from the beginning that he was gay. It wasn’t that she followed him because she thought he would change his mind on _being gay_ or something. She just didn’t know what else to do; he was her only friend. Renly was leaving their theater company for Austenland, a place where wealthy clients, usually women, would pay an irresponsible amount of money to be wooed by men in regency outfits. These wooings came complete with tragic backstories and tailor-made personalities to make each woman feel for a week like her personal Jane Austen-inspired fantasies had come true. Brienne felt that the whole thing was acutely embarrassing and that even the deepest of private yearnings wouldn’t be enough to make her risk the ridicule that would no doubt result if she ever paid to be fake-wooed by someone. The idea of someone being forced to pretend to want her, like her, find her funny and interesting. She loathed it. She felt like utter garbage even enabling it. She was terrified of what people would think of her. She followed Renly anyway.

Some people, Brienne had decided long before this, weren’t meant for love. Some people, in this case, included her. When she was a teenager and still a bit naive about things, she thought that true love would find her because she was a romantic. She loved love. She liked romantic books, she liked romantic movies. But time passed, and she had a few terrible experiences with people, and in the end she decided that maybe people like her weren’t meant for love at all. Maybe it was like with sports. You could love a sport, watch it constantly, consume everything about it. It didn’t mean that you were meant to play it. Maybe some people were just meant to spectate.

So she followed Renly for her misguided romantic sensibilities, but she stayed for Catelyn Stark. The owner of Austenland was a stern but loving woman who never looked down on Brienne for anything. Brienne has always liked to feel useful, and Catelyn used her. She understood Brienne’s strengths, and she accommodated them. She began relying on Brienne more as an assistant, which was something Brienne never thought she’d be quick enough to do. She was used to helping with her strength. Her muscles and her broad shoulders. She wasn’t used to being useful for her mind.

It’s so _Catelyn_, to look past the outward armor of a man like Jaime and find the heart beneath.

* * *

So maybe part of it is the trust that Brienne has in Catelyn Stark, but whatever the reason for it, she finds herself enjoying Jaime’s company more after she knows why Catelyn hired him. She laughs more at his insults, understanding them to be jokes. Their arguments turn into banter. He starts helping her in the stables long after he’s meant to be abed, both of them flouting Catelyn’s rules about interacting where the guests might see them. He doesn’t stop being beautiful. He doesn’t stop being too sharp for her by far. But there’s a softness within him that exposes itself slowly over time. Tentatively, and Brienne knows she isn’t the only one who has been burned before by trusting too readily. He reminds her of a battered animal, watching her hand as she reaches out, tensing but trying to trust her not to hurt him. It’s an odd sensation, knowing that she could wound someone with more than just her physical strength. But Jaime doesn’t hide himself away enough. She can see those vulnerable places so easily, and she is always gentle with them. She treats his trust like the gift it is.

People begin to recognize them as a unit, the same way they had with Brienne and Renly before Renly started dating Loras and he and Brienne started drifting. People probably assume that she’s in love with Jaime, because that’s the way things work when someone ugly is so closely tied with someone beautiful, but she isn’t. Not at first. She thinks he’s attractive, of course, and she has no trouble telling him, because he’s the kind of obviously attractive that people can’t help but comment on. It would be weirder if she pretended she _didn’t_ think he was beautiful. It’s easier to acknowledge it, tease him for hating it. He’s uncomfortable, once they become friends, with commenting on her looks, but he doesn’t argue with her when she does it to herself. Just rolls his eyes and changes the subject. 

They work together for two seasons before they get an apartment together, since he tends to spend all his time at her tiny place anyway, falling asleep on the too-small couch when it’s too late for him to go home. Jaime’s the one who finds the place, and the rent is reasonable even if he insists on paying for more than half.

Living together is much easier than living apart, and their friends all hate them for it. Their banter becomes quicker, flashier, like a dance that only they know the steps to. His brother Tyrion watches them with amazement the first time he meets her, at one of Jaime’s plays. She mocks him for his acting choices and he mocks her for her loud, booming laugh when he dropped a prop on stage, and Tyrion’s head bobs back and forth between them, and afterward he tells Brienne that she might be the best thing that’s ever happened to his brother.

Some days, Brienne thinks Jaime might be the best thing that’s ever happened to her. He’s still rude and privileged and oblivious, but he’s her friend. Her _best_ friend. It isn’t like it was with Renly, where she didn’t have anyone else. She has proper friends now, but Jaime’s still at the absolute top of the list. He’s hilarious and infuriating and she isn’t in love with him. He’s safe. He’s too beautiful to fall in love with.

But then he loses his hand.

Not that the loss makes him any harder to love, or any less her best friend, or any less beautiful. But it’s impossible to keep her feelings in the shape of friendship when she has been through something so horrifying with him, and when she has faced the possibility of losing him, and when she has realized exactly how much it hurt to see him so in pain.

She remembers it only in flashes, after.

She remembers leaving the bar, waving goodbye to Tyrion. She remembers Jaime a solid weight against her side. His arm snug around her waist, and her elbow looped around his neck, pulling him close. She’s staggering in six inch heels because he persuaded her to wear them, wanting her to tower over Tyrion’s friend Bronn to “put him in his place”. It hadn’t really worked, considering Bronn spent the whole night talking about how much he liked tall women until Jaime basically sat himself in her lap to claim her, waving Bronn off. But her added height _has_ made Jaime all soft and pliant and close, and she likes the way he snuggles into her side, sleepy and drunk and happy to help her hold herself up on shoes that make her feel weak-kneed and tottering.

“You really do have the most beautiful eyes,” he practically purrs up at her. More cat than the golden retriever she always accuses him of being. She laughs at him.

Then she is torn away from him, her arm wrenched behind her. She remembers that.

She remembers being pushed forward. She remembers Jaime shouting. The men who grab them, she never does find out just how many of them there are, but in her drunken panic it seems like it must be hundreds, crowding them into the alley. She trips when they shove her, and her cheek hits the brick of the building in front of her, and some man keeps his hand on the back of her head, his fingers wrapped in her hair, preventing her from seeing what they’ve done with Jaime. She screams when he shoves her harder, when her face scrapes along the brick. Her skin shredding, the blood and the pain doing away with the very last dregs of her previous pleasant buzz. Jaime is shouting for her. She can hear them beating him.

These men have made the mistake all men make, and they think Jaime is the biggest threat. They have only left one man to hold her, and she overpowers him. Jaime is pleading with them to let her go. Offering them money and whatever else they want. And then there is this horrible sound, and Jaime is screaming.

Brienne will never remember exactly how she fights off the men surrounding Jaime, but she knows she does. She remembers picking up a loose brick and hitting one man in the face with it. She remembers biting another man when he gets too close to her throat with his hand. She takes a punch in her wounded cheek and it makes her cry out, but she doesn’t go down. Even on her heels, she fights them. Every nerve ending in her body, ever muscle she has ever worked, it all comes together and banishes her drunkenness and her fear, and she fights them.

When the men finally run off, she is bleeding from her fists and from her face, and she knows she looks ghastly, because the three people who have stopped to help Jaime and call the police back away with gasps of horror when she comes close. Jaime is looking up at her, and his face is dazed with pain, unfocused. There’s vomit on the ground beside him. His hand is a bloody, pulpy mess.

“Brienne,” he sobs. “Brienne.” And Brienne is in love with him.

* * *

She stays in the hospital with him for days after she’s been discharged for her own torn-open cheek. She raises hell with the nurses when they’re too rough with him. She stubbornly refuses to leave his side, and Tyrion somehow convinces them, or maybe bribes them, to let her stay. Jaime is despondent. Depressed. The damage to his hand is too extensive. The man who crushed it with the baseball bat did too thorough a job. They have to amputate, and he sobs every time he’s awake and present enough to realize it, because the haze of painkillers keeps the information from seeping in permanently.

Tyrion visits. So does Bronn. Catelyn is there every other day.

Jaime’s father visits only once.

Jaime’s asleep when Tywin stops by, and Tywin looks at Brienne in the chair beside the hospital bed with such scorching disdain that Brienne can feel it inside her days later, still, as if he reached inside her and hollowed her out.

Cersei visits, too. Also once.

Jaime’s twin is polite, but her poorly hidden scorn is so palpable that it almost makes Brienne want to laugh. There’s pity, too, like a woman as beautiful as Cersei can’t understand how a woman as ugly as Brienne existed for so long in the world. Brienne leaves her with her brother as soon as she can, and she finds reason to linger afterward in the cafeteria until she sees Cersei leave.

When Brienne gets back to his room, she can see that he has been crying again.

That’s the night he tells her everything. Whispered confessions about he and Cersei. About why he attacked Aerys Targaryen. All of it. Brienne is disgusted and pitying and terrified, and all the while her love for him grows, taking up too much space inside her chest. She should get away from this. She should hate him for this. She hears the guilt in his voice, and she hears the shame, and she hears the way he blames himself for choices he made as a child and the way it hasn’t felt like a choice ever since. She hears that he _expects _her to run. His every whispered word is a fevered, mournful goodbye.

She’s disgusted, yes, but she doesn’t run. There’s a resignation settling into her. She _won’t _run.

“She wouldn’t even look at it,” Jaime says. “She didn’t want me already, and now she can’t look at me at all.”

He’s exhausted when he says it, finally nearing sleep. His voice has that horrible hoarse quality that comes after too many tears. Brienne takes his bandaged stump in her hands, gently.

_I want you,_ she thinks. _Gods forgive me, but I still want you_.

* * *

When he’s released from the hospital, Jaime becomes _frustrating_. He’s angry and bitter and tries to drive her away because he feels guilty for needing so much of her help, and she knows it. She doesn’t allow herself to be driven. When he’s bad-tempered and takes it out on her, she only stares at him until his shame takes over and compels him to apologize. When she adds conveniences for him around the apartment, switching things out so he can better operate with one hand, he tries poorly to hide how emotional it makes him. When she’s too gentle with him, he rages. When he tries to do something with his maimed arm and remembers that he can’t, he’s likely to drop into a dissociative state, his eyes glazed and glassy with a sadness that makes Brienne ache. He is impossible to deal with, and she loves him. Some days she swears he hates her for refusing to allow him to wallow, and she loves him. Some days he lays his head in her lap on the couch and allows her to stroke his hair until he falls asleep, still clutching his arm to his chest, and she loves him.

The scar on her face won’t heal fully without plastic surgery, but she turns down every doctor who suggests it. She never says it to Jaime, because she knows he would hate it, but she won’t cover her scar as long as he can’t have his hand. It only seems fair. And what does she need the surgery for, anyway? She’s never been beautiful.

He’s fitted with a myoelectric prosthetic that allows him functionality, though he has to go to a specialist to learn how to use it, and he always returns from those sessions aggravated and angry about how slowly it’s going. She can see the glimmers of hope that it brings him, though. The possibility of independence.

Brienne loves him fiercely. She loves him wholly. She helps him in every way he lets her, and she loves him all the while.

* * *

Cersei shows up one day when Jaime is out for lunch with Tyrion. Brienne never figures out if she knew Jaime would be away or not. She says that she wanted to see his progress with the hand she bought him, and Brienne lets her in, and she texts Jaime to let him know his sister’s waiting.

Beautiful Cersei, refusing to visit but spending a fortune on the best possible prosthetic. Brienne thinks Jaime would have rather have the visit, but the expense makes her feel inadequate anyway. Cersei can offer Jaime her beauty, her body, her money, and years of love, even if it’s a form of love that Brienne will never understand. All Brienne can offer is her devotion and support, and she can’t hold his weight nearly as well as Cersei can. Brienne’s only shouldering it at all because Cersei doesn’t _want_ to.

Cersei sits down on the couch, taking in the furnishings with an expression of mild amusement. Brienne sits slowly in a chair. She knows that something is coming, but she isn’t sure what.

“You _know_, don’t you?” Cersei asks, finally. Her eyes are on Brienne. Her expression is entirely blank, the way Jaime’s gets when he’s trying to pretend that he isn’t angry.

“I know,” Brienne admits. “Jaime wasn’t himself, on the pain meds. He didn’t tell anyone else.”

Cersei nods, a grateful gesture.

“It’s a wonder it’s been kept a secret this long,” she says. “Jaime never knows how to control his tongue. Well…” She gives Brienne a pointed look, and Brienne can’t help her grimace of distaste. Cersei’s smile grows. “We disgust you. I’m not surprised. But it’s been our whole lives, and I’ve never talked to another living soul about it. It’s almost thrilling to be able to. I _am_ sorry, though. I know you love him.”

Brienne feels her face fall, and Cersei’s smile grows a bit dimmer in response.

There’s pity in her expression.

“I…” Brienne starts weakly. She thinks of Cersei, hiding her affair with her brother for years, now making horrible jokes just because she can. Jaime has said that his sister can be cruel, and Tyrion has used more colorful terms, but Brienne doesn’t think she’s being cruel now. Not on purpose. Not for the sake of cruelty. She’s only being cruel because the things she’s going to say will hurt, and she knows it. She doesn’t particularly care if they do, but it’s not on _purpose. _“Yes,” Brienne hears herself admitting. “But I’m not an idiot. I don’t expect anything.”

Cersei relaxes a bit, and she smiles, and she leans forward in her seat to reach for Brienne’s hand. Brienne gives it.

“Our whole lives, there hasn’t been anyone else,” she says. “Even through my marriage. I endured it, but I never loved Robert. I’ve only ever loved Jaime, and he has only ever loved me. You aren’t the first woman to fall in love with him fruitlessly. And he cares for you a great deal.”

“Yes,” Brienne says. She cannot stomach the sweet sadness of Cersei’s expression. “I know.”

“I feel I owe you something, Brienne. Staying by my brother’s side when I couldn’t bear it. Truly, you have been a saint. Better to him than I have ever been. But I’m his other half. It always comes back to me.”

Brienne wants to cause a scene. She wants to rip her hand away. She wants to demand that Cersei leave. Why? What would be the point? Cersei isn’t saying anything untrue.

“Yes,” she finds herself agreeing. “I know that too.”

“In a movie, some ridiculous fairy tale for the modern age, he would realize that he was never in love with me. Of course, we wouldn’t be related. That wouldn’t sell very well. I’d be the horrible, catty, pretty girl, and you’d be the ugly friend who loved him. He would realize at the last moment that it was you all along, wouldn’t he?”

“I know life isn’t a story,” Brienne says. “I told you I don’t expect anything. I meant it. I’m only his friend. It’s all I’ll ever be.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I’m not trying to be mean,” Cersei says. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you know your place.”

Something inside Brienne rails at that. Her _place_? Her place is at Jaime’s side, where he wants her, and where she wants to be. But Cersei still isn’t wrong. There is a hidden, horrible malice behind her eyes, but she isn’t wrong.

“Then what is this about?” Brienne asks, weakly. “Why are you saying it at all?”

“Jaime loves those movies,” Cersei says. “He likes to think himself a hero from an old tale. A knight or some kind of comic book hero, swooping in and rescuing the damsel. He’s the leading man of every romance, and you’re the ugly girl who needs to be shown that she’s beautiful. You’re the friend he owes everything to. When I told him that we had to stop what we were doing, he found someone to lean on, and you’ve done more for him than I think he ever imagined. I have no doubt that he does love you, in his way. He’s indebted to you beyond just your role as an in-home nurse and his emotional crutch. I know the way he thinks. I know the way he operates. He’s going to convince himself that he’s in love with you.”

Brienne does snatch her hand back, then, and she knows she’s wearing her hurt on her face.

“He won’t,” she says.

“He will.” Cersei is calm, still leaning forward. Her eyes capture Brienne’s as easily as Jaime’s do. “It’s what he does. Jaime is desperate for anyone to love him. It’s his biggest weakness. It’s why he was always the one who cared for Tyrion. It’s why he’s done so many horrible things for me. He wants approval and love and companionship, and he’s _so_ easy to exploit. Right now, I don’t want him. I’ve told him so. Our relationship isn’t healthy for me any more than it is for him, and I’ve been trying to…correct myself. But I know both of us too well at this point.” She smiles a little sadly, and Brienne still sees some glimmer of falseness. Some cruelty. But just because she is enjoying this too much, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. “He will fancy himself in love with you, because it would be the honorable thing to do, and because he knows that you will love him in return. You’ll give him what he wants more than anything. But then, in a year, maybe two, I will want him back. I will tell him that I want him back. And he will come back to me. All the illusions will leave him, and he will know. It won’t matter what he thinks he owes you. It won’t matter that you love him. It won’t even matter if he feels a true measure of love for _you_. All that matters is us.”

She stands up, then, and she smiles at Brienne. Sad. Sweet. Empty behind the eyes. She puts her hand on Brienne’s shoulder.

“Protect yourself, my sweet,” she says. “Because my brother fancies himself the knight. He doesn’t realize how easy it is to become the villain.”

* * *

When Jaime gets home, he’s in a near panic.

“What did she say to you?” he asks. “What did she do?”

“Nothing,” Brienne answers automatically. She has been listless since Cersei left. Those final words a wardrum between her ears. Reminders. Reminders she didn’t need. Jaime’s looking at her with terror. “Nothing,” she says again. “She wanted to see the hand.”

“Brienne, I know she said something,” Jaime says. “She wouldn’t have been so smug otherwise. She said she spoke to you.”

“Oh, did she catch you?” Brienne forces herself to say. “Did she get to see the hand in action?”

Jaime’s expression is briefly devastated, heartbroken. He comes closer to her.

“Brienne,” he says. “Please, tell me. Whatever it is, I can fix it.”

“She called me ugly and thanked me for taking care of you for her,” Brienne says. She tries to sound casual. She tries to make it a laugh. “She wasn’t very nice, but she wasn’t last time we met, either. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Jaime’s still looking at her like that, the way he does when she’s almost afraid of him, because surely he must see. He looks like he sees. This piercing expression.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For whatever she said.”

“Yeah,” Brienne says. “I know.”

* * *

Cersei’s words never leave her.

She knew already that Jaime craved affection. She knew already that he loves to be loved. It got more pronounced after the accident, with Jaime constantly by her side, always buying her things to help make up for the fact that he demanded so much of her time. Always close, always wanting more.

She doesn’t try to disentangle herself from him. She doesn’t turn him away. She doesn’t confront him. She just...notices.

She notices the way he always rushes to do things for her that he knows he can do—clearing the dishes after meals, running little errands, grabbing her some ice cream from the freezer. He sits closer to her on the couch than he used to. He lays his head in her lap more than he used to. He dedicates himself to his hand exercises more than he used to, like he has something to prove to her. He’s always asking her for reassurance.

He tells her that he’s grateful to her. He tells her that she’s his best friend. He tells her that she means the world to him. Her stomach sinks, and sinks, and sinks.

Catelyn comes by one day with some home-cooked meals, because neither Jaime nor Brienne have been very good at looking after themselves lately, and Catelyn can’t help but mother. Jaime’s on his way to physical therapy, and he kisses Brienne on the cheek before he goes, the way he has started doing. After, drinking their coffees and planning the upcoming season, Catelyn clears her throat.

“Jaime seems happier,” she says. “More connected. I assume you’re to thank.”

“Jaime’s doing the real work,” Brienne says. “I’m just supporting him.”

“He seems…attached.” When Brienne only stares, Catelyn smiles and reaches out to squeeze Brienne’s hand on the table. “Like he has feelings for you. The way he looked at you…” But she trails off when she sees the look on Brienne’s face. “Unless that’s not what you want?”

“No, I,” Brienne stutters. She has never wanted to tell someone the truth about something so badly in her life. If anyone can give her advice that she would actually listen to, it’s Catelyn. But she _can’t_. The secrets aren’t hers to tell. “Cersei talked to me about him. About how he…reacts. And I know she’s right. It’s just difficult to deal with.”

“What do you mean?” Catelyn asks.

Brienne picks her way carefully through the conversation. She doesn’t lie to Catelyn, but she also doesn’t tell her everything. She tells her the important things. Jaime’s desire for love and companionship and how Cersei predicted how much more potent it would become.

“She knows him better than anyone,” she says when she’s finished. “Surely she would know.”

Catelyn sighs. She gives herself a moment to think, and Brienne tries not to look too desperate. She wants Catelyn to tell her that she’s an idiot for trusting Cersei. She wants Catelyn to say she should follow her heart. Maybe it wouldn’t be good advice, but it’s the advice that Brienne _wants. _

“Maybe she does know him better,” Catelyn finally says. “Or maybe she only thinks she does. I know they’ve been estranged for a while, and I know that even when they weren’t...there was always more heart to Jaime than what his father and sister wanted to see. When you think you’re looking into a mirror your whole life, it’s probably not easy to see when the reflection starts to change without you. I’ve seen Jaime blossoming lately in a way he never did when I knew him before. Part of it is the work, I know. He loves acting. He loves pretending to fall in love. But I know that part of it is you. But, you’re right. I don’t know him as well as you do. I don’t know him as well as Cersei does. The important thing to remember is to protect yourself. If it doesn’t feel right, tell him. Ask him. Have a conversation. I know it’ll be awkward for a little while, but it’s better in the long run if you’re not sure.”

* * *

Now Catelyn’s words and Cersei’s words line up. _Protect yourself. _

* * *

Brienne goes back to work at Austenland for the final week of the season. Leaving Jaime on his own for a whole week so soon seems like a terrible idea, but she texts him constantly, and Tyrion checks in. Jaime is annoyed that they’re treating him like a child, but he always sounds relieved when she calls him at the end of the day. He doesn’t need to work, with the money he has coming in from his trust fund and the investments he made years ago, but Brienne is relieved when he starts working at the gym where he does physical therapy. It gives him something to do, and he seems to enjoy it.

When she gets back to the apartment after the week is over, the lights in the kitchen are dim. There are candles on the table. 

Jaime stands by the oven, wearing an apron. He has a sauce-covered wooden spoon taped to his stump, and he’s staring at her with wide, guilty eyes.

“Shit,” he says. “You’re early.”

Brienne only stares back at him. He yanks frantically at the tape, ripping the wooden spoon off. He takes off the apron, mussing up his hair in the process.

“Shit,” he says again. “I’m. Surprise! I wanted to make you dinner.”

He smiles at her, embarrassed and beautiful. His one hand clutches the apron to his chest. His cheeks are faintly pink from embarrassment. She forces herself to smile. She forces herself to hug him.

Inwardly, she feels herself shrinking.

This is exactly what Cersei said would happen.

Jaime’s spaghetti is fine. It isn’t great, but he tried, and Brienne eats it happily, dreading what might happen after the meal. Jaime’s nervous, and he keeps picking up his fork and putting it down again, and wiping his palm on his jeans. She sees him start and stop conversation three times. _Please_, she thinks. _Don’t say it._

She has an entire mouthful of pasta when he blurts out, “I’m in love with you,” followed immediately by, “shit” and “I’m sorry” and “I was trying to think of a good way to say it”.

Brienne takes the time she needs to chew and swallow her pasta so she can think of the right words to approach this. She avoids Jaime’s gaze as long as she can, and then she looks back at him and sees that his eyes are big and filled with dread, and more than anything else she feels sorry for _him_. The dismissive way that Cersei said it. Like Jaime needing love and affection was some silly quirk about him that she couldn’t understand. Brienne loves him. Brienne would give him all the affection he wanted. She would love him through _anything_. If only she didn’t know.

But she _does_ know, and she knows that if Cersei calls for him, he’ll go running. How could Brienne possibly compete with her?

“Jaime,” she says finally, gently. “Jaime, I think…I don’t think you know what you’re saying.”

He stares at her for a moment longer. The dread in his expression is growing stronger.

“What?” he asks.

“I think you’re…I don’t know how to say it. Projecting?”

“_Projecting_?”

“On me. Because I’m here. Because you want someone to love you, and I’m here. This is exactly what your sister said would happen.”

“_Brienne_,” Jaime says, horrified.

“She said that this is what you would do. She said you would fool even yourself into thinking…”

“Cersei would have said _anything_ to make sure you didn’t…”

“Jaime. She’s right.”

Jaime stops himself, and his mouth is half open as if to argue, but he only shakes his head and stares mulishly down at his plate.

“She’s jealous,” he finally says. “Of you. I told her that I had feelings for you. I thought she’d told you about them, a few weeks ago. But of course it was worse than that.”

“She wanted to warn me,” Brienne says. He looks hurt now, as if she’s kicked him, and she hastens to add, leaning forward, hesitating and then reaching for and covering his stump with her hand anyway. “She knew you’d feel indebted to me, because I’m here and she isn’t, and because you’d think that that meant that you had to love me. But you don’t, Jaime. You’re my best friend. I don’t need anything else from you.”

“Don’t need? Or don’t want?” Jaime asks. Brienne dodges the question, waving her free hand in the air like it doesn’t matter.

“She told you that she doesn’t want you now, and so you think you need someone else. But she’ll want you back eventually. She always does. And you’ll realize that you made a mistake. You don’t want me at all.”

Jaime pulls his arm away from her, and he holds it to his chest as if she’s injured him. Brienne—like an idiot, she’ll think later—keeps going. Her voice is very steady. Calm. Rational. She thinks she might be getting through to him.

“I know it’s not on purpose. I know you can’t help it. It’s not like I’ve had many friends in my life like you, either. I can see how you might mistake it for love.”

“I’m not mistaking anything,” Jaime says. Brienne is surprised at the venom in his voice. She thought he would be embarrassed. She thought he would take the opportunity to leave the room, go to bed early. He’d approach her tomorrow with his tail between his legs. He would admit that she was right.

“Jaime,” she starts.

“No. I’m not…you’re not listening to me. Cersei lied, Brienne. Cersei said whatever she had to say because she knew I was going to do something like this, and she didn’t want you to think I’d ever…Brienne, look at me. _Please_. If you trusted me. If you believed me. What would you say? Would you say yes?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne answers. It’s a lie. It might be the only time she’s ever lied to him. His face falls. “I mean it’s- Jaime, it’s impossible to say. Cersei…”

“_Please_ stop saying her name,” Jaime snaps, and he presses his hand to his forehead, rubbing at the line between his brows. “Seven hells, Brienne. How can you…how can you think that I would…”

“I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose,” Brienne reminds him. “I just think that you’ve been through a lot. It makes sense. Even I must start seeming appealing when you…”

“_Even you_?” he snaps. His eyes are blazing on hers once again. “What does that mean? Even you?”

“You know what it means.”

“I’m trying to tell you that I love you, and you think I can’t because you’re supposed to be ugly?”

He looks oddly relieved, like he thinks this is a hurdle he can overcome, and nothing is working the way it should. Brienne feels this miserable almost-hatred inside her. She wanted this to be simple. She didn’t want this to be complicated. Jaime reaches for her with his maimed arm, like he’s going to touch her face with it, like he’s trying to _show_ her that they’re the same because her face scar and his maimed hand are supposed to make them “equally ugly” or something, and she just _can’t_. She jerks back.

“I _know_ you don’t love me because I _know_ you’re in love with your fucking _sister_,” she snarls. A panicked response from some deep, internal part of her. Some animal instinct. Jaime stares at her. His stump is still out, over the table between them. Brienne hunches miserably as far away from him as she can get. Jaime lowers his arm slowly, and there is a blank, glazed look on his face again. The way he gets sometimes.

“Oh,” he says.

“Jaime,” she tries.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, Jaime. Honestly, it’s fine.”

“I understand,” he tries. He’s looking at her, and she can’t move. He stands slowly. “I’m…I think I’m going to stay with Tyrion for a little while. I don’t think I should be here.”

“Okay,” Brienne says, despairingly. “Okay. That’s fine. I’ll clean up. Just…I’ll let Tyrion know you’re coming. I’ll call a cab, or…”

“Please don’t,” Jaime says. An expression of weak disgust flickers over his face. “Stop being so fucking nice. I understand.”

Brienne isn’t sure what it is she’s meant to understand. She stands to try and follow him, but he holds his stump out to ward her off.

“I’m going to pack,” he says.

“Okay. Jaime, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You were just honest,” Jaime says. “It’s not your fault I’ve…done what I have.”

“Okay,” Brienne says, and he goes back down the hall to his room. She wants to apologize again, but she feels lighter. It makes more sense now. He’s seen the truth in her words, and he’s embarrassed. Humiliated, maybe. She shouldn’t have been so harsh in reminding him that he can’t love her. That he loves his sister the way Cersei said, in a way that means that any other romantic relationship would be impossible, overshadowed. She should have been trying to counsel him about how to get away from that relationship, just in a less toxic way than trying to convince himself and her that he’s in love with _her_. Instead she threw it back in his face. She shouldn’t have done that. But she couldn’t let him touch her. She had to be strong.

She cleans up the food. She puts the leftovers in the fridge. Jaime reappears with a bag of clothing. He doesn’t look at her.

“Jaime,” she tries. “Just…text me, okay? So I know you’re all right.”

He looks at her at last, and his expression is still so distant. Wry and amused and self-hating and a hundred other things at once. That sharp golden smile that she used to be so afraid of.

“Goodbye, Brienne,” he says.

* * *

It takes exactly three weeks for Brienne to realize that Jaime isn’t coming back. He’s left everything he owns here, so either he’s sneaking in to get new clothes when she’s sleeping, or he’s just living out of that one bag that he packed in a panic. Or maybe he’s just buying a whole new life, somewhere away from her. She texts him five times without response before she gives up and calls Tyrion.

“Is he okay?” she asks when he answers.

“Not really. Will you talk to him?”

“I’ve tried texting. He won’t answer.”

Tyrion is silent on the other end.

“I take it my brother was exaggerating, then. When he said that you wanted nothing to do with him.”

“What? I never _said_ that.” She’s genuinely angry, she realizes. Almost blindingly. “We had a _fight_, and he left. It wasn’t even a fight! It was a, I don’t know, a slightly tense discussion! I thought he just needed time to cool off.”

“Well, Jaime seems to think differently. He’s been looking for apartments.”

Brienne’s breath catches in her throat. The fury builds inside her. She pointed out an inconvenient truth. She protected herself. She tried her best to keep from hurting him, but she didn’t let _him_ hurt _her_, and this is what happens? She loses her friendship anyway. Her best friend.

“Tell him not to bother,” she says. “I’m moving out.”

“What? Really?” Tyrion asks. It’s a sigh, like he can’t believe she and Jaime are both being ridiculous at the same time.

“I can’t afford the rent without him,” she says. “And he paid more of it anyway. I’ll be out by the end of the week.”

“Jaime owns the building,” Tyrion says. “He only took the rent because you insisted you needed to pay it. You can stay there as long as you want.”

The fury continues to build. Higher and higher until she’s almost shaking. It’s almost painful, now, how angry and hurt and confused she is.

“I’ll be out by the end of the week,” she repeats.

* * *

She leaves her key on the counter. A stupid little joke key Jaime had made for her, leopard-print spotted and bright purple.

* * *

She moves in to work for a week, even though it’s an off-week, and she’s one of the only people there. Her things are stored carefully in an empty servant’s room until Catelyn’s daughter Sansa offers to get a place with her as she’s finishing up with university. Brienne agrees. Tyrion texts her several weeks later to let her know that Jaime moved back in.

_Good for him, _Brienne replies.

* * *

Jaime never reaches out. Never asks any questions. Tyrion occasionally contacts her out of the blue to check-in, and Brienne always asks about Jaime. Two years softens the anger and turns it into guilt. Time allows her to remember certain things with more clarity, like the malice she sensed behind Cersei’s supposedly altruistic visit, or the hurt confusion in Jaime’s eyes when she refused to believe him.

“_If_ you trusted me,” he said, during that conversation, and she would remember that at odd moments and would remember that she never reassured him that she _does_. She did. She trusted him completely, but she was so sure that she knew his own heart better than he did, and she understands after two years why he was so angry with her. Angry enough to stop talking to her. Stop asking about her. Moving out and dropping her from his life.

Anger transforms into hurt. It transforms into guilt. It stays within her, simmering, still angry because the situation was awful and because she still thinks that if their friendship meant to Jaime what it had meant to Brienne, he would have fought harder. But Sansa is a good roommate, even if she’s a lot younger than Brienne and sort of baffling in the way that young, pretty girls have always been baffling to Brienne, who was never pretty even when she was so young and who now finds herself twice removed from Sansa’s entire life experience.

It isn’t like Jaime ever fully leaves her. But he’s gone. She can’t undo what she did. She can’t unsay what she said. She just has to live with it.

And now, apparently, he’s coming back.


	3. now they were as strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime returns to Austenland, and the Tyrells arrive for the week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit more angst for you today, folks! Don't worry: overall this story will probably be 4/5 chapters, so there's a lot less angst ahead than there is behind us now!

The first time Brienne sees Jaime in the flesh in more than two years is the first day he arrives back at the estate for the next season. Brienne lurks and watches him out the window—trying and failing not to feel as creepy about it as she does—as he greets Catelyn in the front driveway. Catelyn hugs Jaime not like someone who hasn’t seen him in ages, but like someone who sees him regularly, and Brienne feels the sting. It’s irrational. She already knew that Catelyn still keeps in touch with Jaime. She was always careful to present their friendship breakup as fully amicable to Catelyn, and she has no doubt that Jaime did the same. She shouldn’t feel betrayed that Catelyn asked him back. She shouldn’t feel betrayed that Catelyn has still been friends with him all this time.

She had a chance to fix things, to mitigate the fallout of what happened. She could have gone to Tyrion’s apartment to see Jaime. She could have insisted that he speak to her. She could have tried to make him understand better, but she didn’t. She spent too long being angry, and by the time the anger faded, it was too late.

It’s _still _too late. She tells herself that more than once as she watches them. She doesn’t allow even a spark of hope to linger inside her, because she knows how dangerous hope can be.

She heads downstairs and into the main dining room, where the cast members are all waiting for she and Catelyn to start the first meeting of the season. Brienne takes a seat at the head of the table, and she smiles at Sansa as Sansa gives her a cheeky little wave. The door opens, and Catelyn drifts in, regal even when she’s wearing just jeans and a green sweater. Jaime follows her.

He glances at Brienne. But. That’s it. Just a glance.

He is so _good_ at pretending. He sits down at the table, and he watches with the same vague disinterest he showed back at the beginning as Catelyn approaches Brienne at the head. Catelyn is all motherly concern, but Brienne refuses to react. She won’t if he isn’t going to. Two years of guilt get shoved down, and it allows room for the anger to flourish again. _If he can pretend, so can I. _

“Go ahead,” Catelyn says. It gives Brienne the courage to continue. She stands up, and she smiles. She won’t be made a fool.

She does the same thing she does every season; she introduces herself to any new staff, and she reminds them that they can come to her with any issues throughout the week. She runs down the basic outline of the characters and the customers. She tells them all that she and Catelyn will assign the men to their clients once they’ve made a determination based on the personalities and the characters that the clients decide to embody. She runs through the schedule. She never once wavers.

“And finally, welcome back to Jaime Lannister,” she forces herself to say. “Who has returned to us after an extended absence.”

“After this happened,” Jaime says bluntly, without a smile, holding up his stump. Brienne itches to ask why he isn’t wearing the prosthetic, but she won’t. She just turns to Sansa instead, relieved to look away.

“And a further welcome to Sansa Stark, who’s starting her first year here at Austenland. We’re doing something a little different with Sansa, trying out a new role. Sansa will be leaving us tonight to integrate herself into the Tyrell-Westerling party at the hotel. She has insisted that we call it the “secret shopper” role, so that’s what we’re calling it.” She smiles indulgently for Sansa, who gives her a thumbs-up and a huge smile. “Sansa will be playing the part of a customer for the week. She’ll be valuable in keeping tabs on the clients and in getting a read on their feelings about the experience. You’ll treat her the same way you’d treat any of them, and she’ll report directly to me with everything.”

“Uh, question?” Robb says, raising his hand. “I’m not going to have to pretend to flirt with my sister, am I?”

“No,” Brienne says with a laugh.

“Seconded?” Jon replies. “Austen may have been down with the cousin thing, but I don’t think I could do it without laughing in Sansa’s face.”

“I’m heartbroken,” Sansa gasps. “But believe it or not, I don’t want to have to pretend to swoon over either of you anyway.”

“I don’t know if I’d be totally comfortable with it for my return week,” Jaime says. He looks directly at Brienne, and he could be just any handsome stranger. Someone she’s never met. He could be anyone. She meets his eyes and sees _nothing_ behind them, and Brienne feels herself slide fully into resignation. The nervousness leaves her. The worry leaves her. Indifference is what she can expect here.

He knows that she and Cersei were right. He _was_ embarrassed. She _did _hurt him when she brought it back to Cersei and rejected him. He realized that he never really loved Brienne, but he was humiliated by the way she handled it.

Or. Or he _did _love her. He meant every word he said. And she rejected him. She didn’t trust him. She hurt him.

Whatever it was, two years have burned away whatever real affection he had for her. It makes sense. It’s almost a relief to know.

“Luckily for the three of you, Theon has volunteered to pretend to pretend to woo Sansa,” she answers, meeting Jaime’s eye for long enough that no one could say she avoided it. Then she looks back at Sansa, and she laughs along with Sansa’s exaggerated gag, and it’s over.

* * *

Margaery Tyrell is the woman of the week. The week at Austenland is a birthday gift from her grandmother, who purchased the most expensive package for her. She’ll have the nicest room, and she’ll have the most attentive suitor. The most one-on-one time. The best food. Every guest is treated well in Austenland, but the higher tiers just get _more _of it. It was Jaime who suggested the system, actually.

“They’ll pay more if it’s an option,” he said of the kind of people who used to spend irresponsibly at his father’s place—a much more staid and historically accurate facility that was less about romance and more about field trips for extremely privileged schools. “It doesn’t even matter what the perks are. They’ll pay just because they can, and then _you _can pay your employees.”

He was right, of course, and Austenland hasn’t had a day of struggle since. For all the shit he gives himself about not being as clever as Tyrion or as ruthless as Tywin or as cunning as Cersei, Jaime has always been smarter than he thinks.

* * *

Brienne has met Margaery a few times, only ever in passing, because she’s the sister of Loras Tyrell, Renly’s husband. Margaery has always been nice in the unreadable kind of way that beautiful, wealthy girls can be, especially when they’re young. She has the same affable nature as Loras, but Loras hides some pretty brutal opinions behind a naïve-looking smile, so Brienne feels like she has to assume that it’s the same for Margaery. She can’t help her instinct to hide away. She can’t help her immediate unconscious decision to avoid Margaery as much as possible. Women like Margaery—_like Cersei_, her inner mind supplies—terrify her.

_They never used to_, she reminds herself, before she can shut herself up and stop thinking about why they started to.

Renly obviously gets assigned to his husband by default, but the rest of the party is decided only after Catelyn meets them and Brienne quietly observes them and listens to their conversations in her role as a chauffeur. Margaery and Sansa already seem to be fast friends, sitting with their arms linked in the carriage on the way to the house. Margaery spends half the ride petting Sansa’s hair and telling her how pretty she is, all in era-appropriate language and with the right amount of drama. If there were prizes for client acting, Margaery would already be the top contender. Loras, of course, would be her main competition. He spends the whole ride up to the house pretending to sulk and saying in an affected accent that there’s “nothing at this manor that could interest me” while very obviously scanning the road for signs of his husband.

The other girls—two of them, this time—are quieter, and therefore more difficult to read, but Brienne isn’t worried. Catelyn always seems to know exactly which suitor to pair with which girl. For all her practicality, she’s is a romantic at heart.

After the first half day is done and the clients are all safely abed, Catelyn loosens her dress, takes down her elaborately done hair, and pours whiskey for both she and Brienne, sitting down at the desk in her office, the only room in Winterfell Hall that’s stocked with modern amenities. She somehow looks like she belongs there, even in her regency dress, even as she perches her black-framed reading glasses on her nose and leans in to read the character sheets again on her laptop. Brienne’s worry for the week already seems years away. As long as she has Catelyn, she can do this.

Brienne doesn’t usually drink, especially not during the season, but she sips from the whiskey glass as she lays out the photos of their clients and the potential men to woo them. She sticks Loras and Renly beside each other automatically, and she moves them aside. Sansa, she places next to Theon.

“Jeyne seemed sweet,” Catelyn says. “I met her last week for the initial interview, and she was very nervous. Her mother was…intense.” From Catelyn, that probably means _odious_. “I think she could use a bit of fun.”

“Robb,” Brienne suggests, because it’s obvious. Catelyn nods and takes another healthy sip.

“She’ll like him,” she says. Brienne snorts.

“Everyone likes Robb,” she says.

“That’s because my boy is wonderful. Now, Gilly. Very quiet. I had trouble nailing down her personality.”

“She didn’t say much when I was driving them over. Sansa says she’s nice, but almost too careful about it. Timid, maybe. I think the experience was a gift from a wealthy relative. She seemed a bit overwhelmed. Maybe Jon?”

“I’ll tell him he can break character with her if he needs to. Make sure she’s at least comfortable,” Catelyn agrees. “And I want Jaime for Margaery Tyrell. It seems like a good fit. Jaime’s our best actor, and Margaery seemed most committed.”

“She’s going to lead the rest of the party for sure,” Brienne says. She moves their photos. She can feel Catelyn watching her. “I’m fine,” she says.

“You do seem to be holding up remarkably well.”

“That’s because I _am_.”

“Right,” Catelyn snorts. Brienne can’t help her annoyance.

“If you thought I wouldn’t, why’d you hire him back?” she asks.

“Because he’s our best actor, and because he wanted to come back. And until I saw the look on your face when he walked in, I thought that you had ended things as acquaintances, at least. I had to phone _Tyrion _to find out the truth.”

“You didn’t,” Brienne groans.

“Yes, and he had quite a lot to say.”

“That’s because Tyrion’s a shit,” Brienne says. “If Jaime’s fine, I’m fine. Believe me. I can do this, Catelyn.”

“Yes, I know you can. That’s not what worries me. How you _feel _is what worries me. You’ve always been competent. I wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t. But I’m not speaking as your boss. I’m speaking as your friend. And I’m speaking as _his _friend too. The two of you were remarkably close, and you’re miserable without each other. I suppose I’d hoped that getting the two of you into the same room might at least make you see that, but you appear to be determined to out-poker-face each other.”

“I did what you told me to do,” Brienne reminds her. “I protected myself. I made a choice. He reacted. I think we both _over_reacted, in truth, but it happened. It was two years ago, and we've both moved on from it. We’re professionals. We’re going to be fine.”

Catelyn holds up her hands in surrender, though there’s something reproachful and disappointed in her gaze that stings, because Brienne knows that Catelyn wants more from her. Brienne wants more from herself. She just…can’t afford to give it. Maybe Catelyn’s right. Maybe Jaime _does _miss her. But she can’t be sure, and she _is _sure that her heart can’t afford the risk.

It’s exactly what ruined things last time. Reluctance to trust. Maybe she hasn’t changed as much in two years as she would have hoped.

* * *

She has an odd dream that night about Jaime. He’s trying to find her in this dark, winding cavern, deep underground. He’s calling out for her, growing panicked, going deeper, but she just follows him. Watches him. She doesn’t answer him at all.

* * *

Watching Jaime work has always been painful.

He has never not been beautiful, but his looks are particularly potent in the costumes he has to wear when he plays the part of the Darcy-esque suitor to whichever wealthy woman can afford his affections. It especially hurts to watch because he’s so _earnest_. Even at the beginning of the week when he’s supposed to be prickly and standoffish—so his client better feels like she has _won _something when he eventually falls for her charms—his eyes linger on the woman he’s meant to be wooing with a look Brienne saw often enough in their shared apartment. Affection. Amusement.

_Really_, she wants to demand of him. _Is it so surprising that I would have trouble knowing what’s real with you?_

Brienne sometimes wonders—in the _absolute _back of her mind—what it would be like to be at the center of his performance. If she had never come to work here and had instead overcome her fears enough to purchase a week of being pinned by that gaze. What would it feel like? Even knowing it wasn’t real, even knowing it wasn’t going to last.

_You had the chance to know. You chose to protect yourself instead. _

It hurts to watch him working, so instead Brienne avoids him. Rather studiously, rather completely. She knows so much about the way Austenland runs behind the scenes that it doesn’t even take any effort to avoid him. And she remembers, too, his habits. She dodges him before the morning meetings by rising early to avoid his last-minute trip to the kitchen for coffee. She spends more time in the stables than ever, because he knows that’s her favorite place to work and he’ll avoid it as much as he can. She never goes near the costume fitting rooms, because she remembers that he’s constantly getting things fixed and taken in and let out, because he’s picky about the way his costumes fit. She spends more time with Robb and Jon and the actors playing servants so that there’s always at least one or two people around as a buffer, so she won’t risk having to endure a silence between she and Jaime that might grow too pointed. She takes every errand Cat asks of her, and she darts from place to place as if exceptionally busy even when she _isn’t_. She keeps her eyes forward. She doesn’t let them wander to wherever Jaime might be, though she always seems to sense when he’s near, just like she used to.

It’s more painful than she expected, to have him around, even if she doesn’t have to see him. Just knowing he’s _here_. It reminds her of the way he used to pop around seemingly every corner, ready to tease her for her high-pitched squeaks of surprise. The way he used to lean against the wall beside her and joke about her form as she pitched hay. Even the way he used to look in the fading light from the sunset as they’d walk the grounds together. Something wistful and soft in his expression.

Being here for the past two years without him wasn’t _easy_, but it was easier than this. This just feels cruel.

_I know I made a mistake_, she wants to say to the gods, as if they would listen. _I know I hurt him. I’m already paying for it. Just let me be. _

If Jaime has any reaction to her avoidance, he blessedly doesn’t show it. He avoids her just as carefully. He focuses all his attentions on Margaery Tyrell, which is exactly as it should be. He flirts with her and charms her and makes her giggle with whispered words. Brienne tries not to think of how he used to make her laugh.

* * *

Sansa could not be happier in her role, and Brienne is amused by and happy for her friend, even if she can’t quite shake her own listlessness. Sansa’s so proud of her own acting chops, and so proud of herself for spying for Brienne, and Brienne can’t help but feel guilty for being such a downer.

Sansa really _is_ useful, too. She’s friendly enough to be on good terms with all of the girls, even quiet Gilly, by the end of the second day. She’s giddy and happy and keeps bragging that somehow no one has guessed that she’s related to Catelyn even though they look so alike despite the temporary dye that Sansa has been using to darken her hair. She _does _make it easier, and the Secret Shopper role is definitely one that Brienne’s going to keep around after this season. But she likes it especially because Sansa’s presence in all the big scenes and set pieces means that Brienne _doesn’t_ have to be there.

Sansa spends most of her time with Margaery, Theon, and Jaime, which means she can report on everything they do. She gushes about Margaery and how sweet and nice and funny she is, and she and Theon seem to be having fun playing out their fake fake romance.

It’s just that she also talks a lot about Jaime. How kind he is and how chivalrous he is and how she wishes he had wanted to pretend to flirt with her because even if it wasn’t real, it would be so lovely and maddening to have his attention on her. She can’t fathom why he and Brienne haven’t made up yet. She asks leading questions that Brienne refuses to acknowledge.

Brienne worries about Sansa. She knows how easy it is to fall for a man like Jaime, and she also knows that Sansa isn’t seeing Real Jaime. She’s seeing Actor Jaime, whose charm is impossible and wonderful and always smooth. It’s the charm meant for Margaery, and Sansa is such a romantic. It would be so easy for her to get too attached without realizing that Actor Jaime isn’t Jaime at all.

It’s easy for Brienne to tell herself that she’s worried about Sansa, and it’s easy to tell herself that it’s _reasonable _to be worried about Sansa. It’s also easy to remember that if she ever expresses it, she’ll sound bitter, and jealous, and all those things that people probably already assume she is.

Sansa wouldn’t ever tease Brienne for it. She wouldn’t mock her. She would look at Brienne with the sympathy of the young and pretty, and Brienne doesn’t think she could endure that.

What would Sansa have done, she wonders. If it was _Sansa _in the apartment that day when Cersei arrived. Would Sansa have listened to her? Or would Sansa have listened to _Jaime_, trying to be romantic with a home-cooked meal. Blurting out that he loved her because he couldn’t think of a better way to put it. Would Sansa have allowed her fears to hold her back from reaching out for something that she wanted?

Brienne knows the answer to that. That’s the worst part.

* * *

She does her best not to let people know that she’s avoiding Jaime, but her two stableboys seem to realize something’s up. Podrick is always somehow around whenever the actors are heading to the stables with their clients. He always tells her they’re on their way with a warning kind of edge that means he must know that she would prefer not to be around when they show up. And Hodor, who doesn’t tend to get involved except to happily say his own name to new people and then go back to tending to the horses, physically blocks Jaime and Margaery from entering the stables one morning early in the week. Brienne had hurried outside for a quick check on the horses, intending to be well away by the time the guests were up, and suddenly she finds herself trapped. She doesn’t even know it’s Jaime yet; she’s mostly embarrassed that she’s wearing her pajamas—boxer shorts and a tank top with a costume coat thrown over it.

“Hodor,” Hodor says loudly, vaguely panicked. “Hodor!”

Brienne hears Jaime’s voice, asking Hodor what’s wrong, and she doesn’t waste a moment. She doesn’t think about how much more embarrassing it would be to be caught hiding. She just pulls herself up into the loft and lies down behind some old bales of hay, flat on her back, perfectly still. She should be hidden unless someone climbs the ladder. And if Jaime pokes his head up here, this is a well-known nap spot. She can pretend to be asleep.

He would never believe that, though.

_Please, gods, don’t let him poke his head up. _

Once Jaime manages to get Hodor to let them in, he leads Margaery to the stall where her chosen horse—their _best _horse—is waiting for her. He really isn’t supposed to be with her by himself, without a chaperone, but from their conversation, Sansa and Theon aren’t far behind them. And those are the kinds of rules, anyway, that their clients delight in breaking. It’s just a taste of rebelliousness, and they eat it up. Jaime always knows exactly how to play it.

Brienne listens to him saddling the mare. She has no idea why Hodor isn’t helping, but the big man hasn’t even entered the stables. Possibly he’s too nervous to enter, knowing that Brienne is in there somewhere. Brienne’s hands curl into fists as she hears Jaime struggling. It can’t be easy with one hand. She wishes that he had let them fit him with a wooden hand, at least. Catelyn had suggested it, apparently, but he turned it down. He didn’t want to wear anything. He liked his backstory as a dashing naval captain who was injured at sea, and he wouldn’t hide it.

Brienne is still embarrassed when she thinks about how emotional that information had made her. Two years have been good for his self-esteem, apparently.

“Do you need help?” Margaery asks suddenly. “I don’t know much about horses, but if you tell me what to do…”

“It’s all right,” Jaime says. His Actor Voice is airy and bright in a way he never was before, when he struggled. She wonders if it’s all acting now or if he genuinely doesn’t mind. Whenever Brienne used to try and help him, back at the beginning, he would lash out. Say something cruel and then just as abruptly take it back and apologize. She thinks of him, suddenly, in their half-empty apartment. Struggling on his own or with Tyrion because she wasn’t there, and she feels guilty all over again. She knows he can do it. She _knows _he’s gotten used to it. But her guilt won’t let her rest. Jaime says, “I’m used to more mobility, but I can figure it out.”

“I imagine it’s rather difficult, considering your usual…”

“Prosthetic?” Jaime asks with clear amusement. “You can say it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to break any rules, talking about modern conveniences,” Margaery giggles.

“Hodor won’t tell anyone. Will you, Hodor?”

“Hodor,” Hodor agrees solemnly from outside.

“It’s just that the one you have is so incredible. The demonstration you gave us last year at your father’s party…”

“It had better be impressive for all the money my father and sister paid for it,” Jaime says. Brienne has no right to be upset about it, this revelation that Jaime and Margaery know each other already. It’s just that she never would have guessed. The way they acted around each other was as if they were perfect strangers. She would have known Jaime well enough to realize it, once, but she doesn’t anymore. Maybe that’s the only reason she’s upset, but she doubts it. She knows herself well enough that she can admit to a very petty, very useless jealousy. Whether Jaime was sincere in his affections two years ago or not, those affections are gone. She has no claim on him. She has no right to be upset. And yet her stomach swoops anyway.

“Yes, I imagine it was rather costly! And your brother said it was difficult to learn. Well done on you for learning it. Seriously, Jaime.”

He laughs a little, demurring, and Brienne closes her eyes, trying not to react to the sound. Gods, this is worse than she thought it would be.

“It’s useful, I’ll give it that. But you wouldn’t believe what a pain it can be. I actually much prefer to leave it bare. You get people’s true reactions that way.”

Brienne’s eyes open, up in the loft.

If she were a braver woman, she would stick her head down. She would demand of him, “is _that _what you think I was running from?”

But no, not every bitter sigh or harsh word from Jaime has to be about _her_. She remembers Jaime’s devastation in the hospital room when his sister left. The way he reacted because his sister no longer wanted him. Because she hadn’t even been able to look at him. Maybe that comment indicates that two years haven’t changed anything, despite Cersei’s grim predictions.

Maybe it’s just a _comment. _Maybe she should stop trying to read into everything he says.

Margaery, down below, has moved closer to Jaime. Brienne can’t see it, but she can imagine it, and she can hear it in the rustle of skirts and in the way Margaery’s voice gets all low and soothing. Flirting, almost.

“You know,” she starts, and Brienne hears that Jaime is no longer struggling with the saddle. “I couldn’t help but think about what your brother told me. About how you were hurt.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jaime says.

“Two years isn’t very long. You were working here at the time, right?”

“Ms. Tyrell.”

Jaime’s voice is short, irritated. If Brienne was Margaery, she would have stopped talking. Margaery is made of sterner stuff despite her pretty package; she continues, unbothered.

“Oh, I know it’s silly of me to get so wrapped up in the intrigue of it all. But of course Tyrion told me about the woman you were with at the time.” Brienne bites the inside of her cheek, every muscle in her body tensed. “And the scar on her face, and how she fought off your attackers and possibly saved your life.”

“You’re not as good at subtlety as you think you are,” Jaime says dryly. Brienne feels sick. She knows where Margaery is going with this, and she can’t hear it. She can’t hear what Jaime has to say about her. But she can’t move, either. It would be the most humiliating moment of her life if she was discovered here.

“Not like your sister, no,” Margaery says sweetly, and Brienne bristles. Is she alluding to...?

“No,” Jaime says. “Not at all.”

“So I’m right, obviously, about big, ugly woman with the scar.”

“Maybe we _should_ follow the rules. You never know when Hodor might decide to snitch.”

“Hodor,” Hodor protests from outside.

“Subtlety may not be my forte, but give me a little credit, Jaime. From the way you two plainly avoid each other, you obviously aren’t just strangers. You both look like guilty, kicked dogs. You should have known better to show any weakness when I was here.”

Jaime laughs. Harsh and a little cold.

“I should have, you’re right,” he says. “The big woman with the scar is none of your concern.”

“Nor is she any of yours, apparently.”

“Surely you’ve lost a friend or two in your life. Even _you, _with all your charms.”

“There’s losing a friend and there’s suffering a heartbreak, and your brother says…”

“There are things my brother doesn’t know,” Jaime says. His voice really is dangerous now, and Brienne closes her eyes, like it will hide her even farther away. Margaery’s voice is still smooth. She’s either very brave or very oblivious. Perhaps both.

“Don’t let _him_ hear you say that. The poor man would be devastated. And it isn’t true, anyway. Your brother knows quite a lot.”

“So do you, apparently.”

“Jaime.” Margaery’s voice is softer now, and Brienne can hear her moving even closer. Her voice is even lower. Brienne squeezes her eyes even tighter shut. She’s such an idiot. She shouldn’t have gone to the stables. She got complacent. She’s such a _fool. _“Your sister is a cruel, horrible woman. I know you know my opinion on her hasn’t changed for years now. But you aren’t the same as her, and I would never do anything to hurt you. For the affection I have for Tyrion, if nothing else. Your secret is safe with me.”

“There is no secret,” Jaime insists.

“Of course not,” Margaery says. Still soft and kind and perfect. “Not anymore. Not for years now, correct?”

“Tyrion doesn’t know everything,” Jaime repeats. “And neither do you.” He sounds a bit browbeaten, actually, and Brienne feels this old protective impulse. She wants to jump down between them, ward Margaery off, but that isn’t them anymore, and there’s a horrible part of her that wants to hear the end of this. Even knowing that she’s eavesdropping. Even knowing that she shouldn’t. “Brienne and I were roommates, yes. She was the woman I’m sure Tyrion has talked endlessly about, because he likes to mock me when I feel too much.”

“He wasn’t mocking you. He was concerned for you.”

“And is that what you’re doing now? Concern?” Jaime asks. He’s a little bit more like Brienne remembers, now. Passionate and tense. There’s nothing indifferent about him. It’s a reminder, more than anything else, of how he used to sound when he spoke to her, and how different it is now that he no longer has any reaction to her at all. “Or are you just looking for a place in which to dig your claws? Because it isn’t going to work. Two years is a long time. What I felt, what Tyrion told you…it’s long past. Those feelings were ill-advised to begin with, and they’re gone now. My brother doesn’t know everything, and my sister even less. Whatever it is you’re looking for, or threatening me with, I’m afraid you’re going to have to try a little harder than that. There’s nothing here for you, Ms. Tyrell, except what you have paid to experience.”

Margaery is silent, and there is a part of Brienne that yearns to lean over the edge and see the expression on her face. But she’s still so afraid to move, and besides. She can barely breathe now, for the pain.

It’s almost surprising that she’s so hurt by it. She was so sure that she had resigned herself to this. So sure that she understood exactly what it was going to be like. But this still somehow _aches_. Hearing those words that were meant for someone else. Knowing that Jaime has no idea that she’s even here. Nothing tempered for her comfort or made cruel to wound her purposefully. Just _honesty_. He wasn’t even terribly mean about it. He didn’t even disparage her. He just stated exactly how he felt. 

Sansa and Theon are approaching. Brienne can hear them coming across the yard, pretending to pretend to flirt with each other.

“All right, Captain Lannister,” Margaery says, friendly as ever. “If you insist.”


	4. I offer myself to you again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tyrells extend their stay for another week, putting Brienne in Jaime's path once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, have a much longer chapter than I expected! I decided that rather than split this one up into two and drag this angst on, you get to have all of it at once!

Jaime continues to be professional after that overheard conversation in the stables, but there’s tension in him whenever he interacts with Margaery. The Tyrell girl might be a better actor than he is, because she shows no signs of anything. She smiles and simpers and spends most of her time befriending Sansa, but she doesn’t _avoid _Jaime. She treats him like the fake beau he’s supposed to be, and Brienne lurks on the sidelines and stays out of their way as much as possible.

She thinks about that conversation too much. She thinks her heart might be broken. Or re-broken, anyway. Or maybe it never really healed in the first place, and now it’s a gaping wound again.

She has wondered, in the two years since that disaster of a dinner. Wondered infrequently, and with a kind of desperate refusal to actually accept it, but…

She of course had to acknowledge at some point in those two years that she might have been wrong. If she hadn’t thought it a possibility, she wouldn’t feel so guilty. It didn’t seem possible, because how _could _it be possible? Jaime Lannister is the most attractive man she’s ever met. He was affectionate towards her when they were friends because she was _safe_, because there was no way she would ever expect that a man like him would be sincere in his interest in a woman like her. Cersei was right when she said that Jaime was looking for someone who would love him, and she was right when she said that Jaime would convince himself that he was in love with her and fancy himself the hero for it.

Cersei was right, too, when she said that Jaime would go back to her, in the end, and that Brienne would be left reeling and realizing that she had been a fool for ever indulging that secret hope.

Cersei _had _to be right. It made too much sense. It made so much more sense than the absolutely absurd idea that Jaime Lannister may have genuinely fallen in love with _her_, of all people.

But…two years allowed for some time to consider the alternatives. Well, one alternative, really: Jaime was right, and Cersei’s speech had been a mode of revenge for the fact that Jaime had the temerity to tell her that he had feelings for another woman.

She has gone back and forth so many times, and she knows she’ll keep doing it until she gets a definitive answer, but after hearing what he said to Margaery, she feels closer than ever to the truth.

The way he left so suddenly that evening. She thinks of it often, especially now. She had snapped at him that he was in love with his sister, and she had jerked away from his stump when he tried to touch her with it. What was it that sent him over the edge? Was it the disgust he heard in her tone when she reminded him that he had been involved in an incestuous relationship? Was it the disgust he saw in her face when she jerked away? She didn’t feel disgust for the stump, and her disgust for his relationship with Cersei was _there_, but it was buried beneath her love and her understanding and the want for him to escape from something that had never been healthy and had become less healthy than ever. She had been angry, desperate to put an end to what she saw as his projections. She had wanted them so badly to be true, and the fact that she believed them false was just too painful to endure.

Jaime’s insecurities were different from her own, and she knows after two years that he must have seen something in her face. He told Tyrion that she wanted nothing to do with him. She thought he was just being dramatic at the time, but he wasn’t, was he? He thought she wanted him gone. _Stop being so fucking nice, _he had said, and she had been so confused. He thought she was _putting up _with him. He thought she was _enduring _him, and so he left. And she had been so angry at the blow-up over a simple misunderstanding that she refused to reach out. She left the apartment instead. Each of them thought they understood what the other wanted. Each of them thought they knew what was in the other’s heart, and they made choices based on those misconceptions that have rippled now for two years, out of control.

He could have texted her back. He could have explained why he was upset. She knows, she _does_, that they’re both to blame. But she thinks about what _she _would have done if she had swallowed all her fears and insecurities and confessed her feelings to him only to have him react with disgust. Would _she _have stuck around? Would she have waited for him to explain?

No, she doesn’t think. She would have run, too.

* * *

After hearing his conversation with Margaery and the resigned way he spoke of their former friendship, she has to finally accept that the guilty part of her has had it right all along. He _did _have feelings for her. He _was _sincere. Whether Cersei was right about the origin of those feelings is difficult to say, but she thinks he’s at least self-aware enough that if her words _were _correct, he wouldn’t label the problem _feeling too much_ now, two years later.

No, if he was being honest with Margaery—and she remembers the defensive sound of his voice well enough even after a two year separation to think that he likely _was _being honest—then she must accept that he had feelings for her then, and she must also accept that those feelings are gone.

It’s a painful sense of finality, but it’s actually not quite as painful as she expected. There’s something almost freeing about it, knowing that she made the wrong choice to protect herself two years ago. At least it’s less murky. Thinking she _may _have made a mistake and _knowing _that she did are two very different feelings, and at least this way it feels like closure.

Yes, she did choose the wrong thing. Yes, she hurt the man she loved. Her best friend. Yes, she chose to protect herself instead of trusting him to know his own heart, and she cannot go back and change it.

At least now she knows that for a brief time, a man like Jaime Lannister _did_, in fact, love her. It’s certainly not enough, but it’s better than nothing.

* * *

The Tyrell party are apparently enjoying Austenland so much that Olenna Tyrell arrives two days before the end of the stay and announces that she’s paying to extend the stays of _all _of them an entire extra week, including the girls who arrived on their own. Gilly appears a bit overwhelmed when she’s informed, but she agrees with a blush after Jon mentions a walk in the gardens—Brienne knows from Jon that Gilly has been enjoying spending time with the gardener, Sam, so the romantic in Brienne hopes that she’ll take advantage of the extra week. Jeyne is in raptures, hanging off of Robb’s arm and exclaiming that two weeks is the longest she’s ever been away from her mother, as if she has been granted a stay of execution. Jaime looks mildly harassed, and Brienne has to look away when she realizes that she felt the urge to look at him in commiseration, the way she would have once. Exchanging glances and eyerolls and little laughs. It’s so easy to fall back into that habit with him, except he doesn’t do the same.

Once the announcement is made, and the clients leave to make arrangements, Catelyn turns to Brienne with a grim expression, and the reality of the situation sinks in.

“Oh, _shit_,” Brienne breathes. “Shit. Okay.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Catelyn says.

“No, it’s okay. I can handle it,” Brienne says.

“Handle what?” Sansa asks.

“The ball,” Brienne answers, pulling her phone out of her chauffer coat pocket. “It has to be the last day of the trip. I’ve already got orders put in for almost everything.” She turns and scans the room, and she finds Sam pretending not to stare wistfully out the window at Gilly as she walks outside. “Sam,” she says, startling him. “I need you to get on the phone with the florist. Push the order back a week. It might be too late for a full refund, but…”

“I’ll do it,” Jaime says. She’s so surprised by his voice that she stops talking. He’s looking at her oddly, like he’s only just remembered who she is. “Addam and I are friends. I’ll talk him into it.”

“Thank you, Jaime,” she breathes, still halfway in shock, and Jaime’s expression wavers a bit.

“If you need anything else,” he says, before he shutters himself away again and moves out of the room.

Brienne takes a moment to recover, ignoring Catelyn’s visible concern.

“All right,” she says. “Gendry. If you could call the caterer…”

* * *

Pushing off the orders for the ball that’s meant to occur at the end of every Austenland trip is a major undertaking, and Brienne is never very good at being firm on the phone, but she manages to secure at least partial refunds for everything except for the furniture rental. The Freys have always been her most stubborn vendors, and they have something of a grudge against Catelyn, so it’s no surprise that they pretend like their hands are tied. She points out that the _caterer _managed to work something out with them, and their services are much more perishable than fucking tables and chairs. The owner, predictably, is unmoved.

Later, she’s totaling the damage to Catelyn, and when she gets to the Freys, Catelyn stops her.

“Jaime took care of that,” she says. It must take a superhuman effort not to look as smug as she wants to. She _does _smile a bit.

“What, again?” Brienne asks.

“Neither of us are overly fond of Walder Frey,” Catelyn says. “And luckily, there’s only one person in Westeros who Walder Frey thinks is worth impressing: Tywin Lannister. Jaime managed to talk his way into a full refund.”

It has been a long and trying day, filled with arguing with people on the phone and running around and barely eating anything, and so Brienne forgives herself for getting a bit teary-eyed when she leaves Catelyn’s office and heads for the kitchen.

When she gets there, she finds Arya and Gendry teasing each other as they clean up after the day’s feast, and she finds Jaime and Sansa chatting at the kitchen table. Everyone goes silent when she comes in, and she makes like she just meant to grab something quick on her way up to bed, though she had planned on sitting down and gorging herself on stress-food until she couldn’t move.

“Thank you all for your help today,” she says on her way out the door, a small plate of leftovers in hand. She hesitates, and she finally makes herself look at Jaime. He’s looking back at her. She can’t read his expression. “Catelyn says you handled the Freys.” Jaime nods. Brienne swallows back a thousand apologies. “You’re a miracle worker,” she says instead, and one corner of Jaime’s mouth lifts in half a smile.

* * *

“Well, that’s good,” Renly points out when she basically word-vomits the entire story on him the next morning as they and Loras are lounging in his room.

“Very adult,” Loras agrees. “I don’t think any of my friendship breakups have _ever _gone so well. There’s always a lot of backstabbing and quiet loathing and turning all our mutual friends against each other.”

“Shocking,” Renly says, rolling his eyes fondly towards Brienne. “_Tyrells_,” he whispers.

Brienne smiles, but her heart isn’t in it, and Loras and Renly zero in on her, knowing her well enough to know.

“What is it?” Renly asks, his voice needling, whining. “What’s wrong? You have to tell us.”

Talking to Renly about it, Brienne realizes, is especially difficult because the situation with Renly was the anti-situation with Jaime. She had such a crush on Renly, and it nearly ruined their friendship because she kept enforcing distance between them, like she thought that it would help. And Renly, of course, had barely noticed. They’d been friends, sure, but they weren’t friends to the degree that Brienne had _imagined _they were friends. And then, one day, Brienne was just…over it. She still cared about him, and she was still a tad infatuated with him in that he was handsome and charming and it would have been more difficult to _not _be at least a little bit interested in him. But she wasn’t in love. She didn’t even have a crush.

With Jaime, this forced distance hasn’t put any of that into perspective. He’s still too handsome for her. He’s still sometimes witty to a degree of cruelty, even if he never turns it in her direction anymore. He’s still the best friend she’s ever had. But she doesn’t love him any less. Two years has hardly done anything at all.

“I think,” she starts carefully. “That I would almost rather if he _couldn’t _be a rational adult about it. I’m not. I’m good at pretending to be. I’m good at holding it together. But he’s never been like that. He’s always been so…”

“Obnoxious?” Renly asks.

“_Loud_, emotionally speaking?” Loras guesses.

“He can’t keep anything hidden,” Brienne decides. “It’s always been out in the open. So when he looks at me and there’s nothing there, and he’s just totally normal, I know that it’s because he doesn’t feel _anything_.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s better at hiding his feelings than you think he is?” Loras asks. He has that same vaguely hinting tone that Margaery used with Jaime earlier. Like maybe he _knows _something about Jaime.

“No,” she says, though Loras is right; Jaime’s been keeping the secret of his incestuous affair for almost his entire life. Of course he can keep his feelings hidden when he has to. “No, not about this. It’s obvious.”

“I think it _is _obvious. That’s what I’m saying,” Loras grumbles, put out, waving his hand at her like she’s a nuisance.

“I think I know what she’s getting at, though,” Renly says. “What’s that thing? About indifference being the very opposite of love? It’s like that. If he hated her, at least she’d know he still give a shit.”

“Exactly,” Brienne says, relieved. “Yes! When he’s blank with me, it just reminds me of the mistakes I made.”

“And when _you _are blank with _him_, what do you think it tells him?” Loras asks. Brienne’s surprised by the question. The dismissal from Loras usually means he’s done with the conversation, but plainly he isn’t. He looks a lot like his sister, suddenly. The pointed, almost sly expression. Brienne considers his words carefully.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You don’t,” Loras says, patient. “Because you don’t know what he’s thinking. Because you’re not a mind-reader.”

“Loras,” Renly says gently.

“I’m not trying to be _mean_,” Loras says. “But you said that the problem last time was that you assumed you knew Jaime’s feelings, and now you’re claiming that you know it was a mistake, but you’re doing it again. Right now. You’re assuming he’s indifferent because he’s pretending to be indifferent, but the man’s a _Lannister, _Brienne. I may think he’s a pompous ass, but he had to grow up in the literal lion’s den. You learn to hide your emotions early when you grow up in a place like that.”

* * *

Brienne thinks about it, later. It forms a knot of something sad and painful in her chest, because it reminds her of when she and Jaime were friends, and she assumed that it was impossible for him to hide anything away. He always just seemed so open. Vibrant. She was used to hiding herself behind rigid walls so that people wouldn’t think that she was overstepping, or wouldn’t mock her for taking up too much space, or wouldn’t notice her at all. Jaime just always seemed the opposite, and she had assumed that his rich, oblivious asshole act wasn’t an act at all; he was just used to getting his way, so why would he hide anything?

But she had seen that vulnerability in him. It was poorly hidden, but she had seen it. She had recognized it, back when they were first getting to know each other. Why had she come to assume that she was the only one skilled at hiding? Again, she thinks it comes back to her constant surprise when she remembers that she’s capable of hurting other people with more than just her physical strength. She’s used to being the one hurt, used to being the one mocked and derided. She sometimes forgets to make space for others peoples’ emotional pain. Not consciously, just…obliviously.

Loras might be right. She isn’t sure if it makes her feel better or just more anxious, wondering what true emotion Jaime is hiding behind the indifferent mask.

* * *

Near the end of the second week, just as Brienne has found some kind of normality again after all that vendor rescheduling, Sansa appears.

“I have a question,” she says sweetly. She looks out of place here in the stables. She probably would even if she wasn’t wearing such frilly, delicate clothing. Brienne despairs of the hay getting caught in the hem of her dress, but Sansa barely seems to notice, leaning against the fence beside Brienne and watching as Brienne washes her hands.

“About what?” Brienne asks, wary about the overly innocent tone.

“It’s about Jaime,” Sansa says. Brienne tries her hardest not to tense up or look suspicious or upset or _anything _at all.

“What about him?” she asks.

“Just…he seems like a great guy. A good person.”

“He is.” The answer is reflexive, almost defensive. She swallows embarrassment back. “Why?”

“Why aren’t you friends with him anymore, if he’s a good person?” Sansa asks. Brienne sighs and finally turns to look at Sansa, watching her friend with a wariness she wishes she didn’t feel. Why does Sansa want to know? Why is she asking? Brienne feels trapped and hurt and, absurdly, abandoned. Sansa must see her reluctance in her expression, because she says, “I only mean that you’re one of the best people I know, and if you don’t like someone, usually there’s a good reason.”

“It’s a long story,” Brienne answers. “But it’s nothing to do with who he is. Jaime is…he has more baggage than anyone I’ve ever met. There’s a lot of stuff that makes him…difficult. Difficult to care about. Or not difficult, just…dangerous. And I chose to protect myself, so.”

“Oh,” Sansa says, leaning heavier on the fence as she ponders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would still be so painful.”

“It isn’t,” Brienne insists. Revises to, “I’m used to it. Really. It isn’t so painful anymore.”

“So he really is that nice, then?”

“Sansa…” Brienne sighs. She bites her lip. Reconsiders. Because, really, she knows she can’t say anything without sounding like a jealous cow. Even if Sansa doesn’t know. And Sansa would be kind about it, too. That might be even worse. “Just. Be careful,” she says. “He’s a bit old for you, I think. I don’t think your mother would approve. And I meant it about the baggage.”

Sansa laughs at that, and she reaches over to pat Brienne comfortingly a few times on the forearm.

“Oh, Brienne,” she says, rolling her eyes. And then she flounces off, leaving Brienne feeling a bit startled and caught.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Brienne is told by Pod that Catelyn wants to speak to her in her office, and so naturally she assumes that the conversation will involve the ill-advised crush that her employer’s daughter apparently has on Brienne’s former roommate. She makes her way to Catelyn’s office, practically dragging her feet, trying to figure out what to say.

When she enters the room, she finds that Catelyn has poured both of them some tea, and she sits down and dutifully takes a big sip.

“Brienne,” Catelyn starts carefully. “I know this is a really delicate situation, so I wanted to talk to you before I made any additional decisions, but…are you comfortable with this?”

“What?” Brienne asks, startled. “Me? Comfortable with what?”

“Jaime Lannister,” Catelyn answers. Brienne doesn’t want to say anything without being _sure _it’s about Sansa, so she attempts to feign ignorance. It’s not a good look for her.

“What about Jaime?” she asks.

“I know you weren’t consulted on his return, and I’ve felt…I should have asked you. I thought that it would be all right, but you’ve been distant, and I’m worried my decisions have made you unhappy. Before I renew his contract for the rest of the season, I wanted to check in with you.”

“He’s your best actor,” Brienne reminds her, shocked that Catelyn is even suggesting it.

“And yet we’ve done fine without him for two years. I’m more interested in securing the comfort of my most loyal employee. And yes, Brienne, I’m counting my children among them.” Catelyn smiles a little, seeming to sense that Brienne is overwhelmed. “He won’t thank me for telling you this, so keep it between us if you ever _do _manage to have a conversation again, but he was the one who reminded me I should think it over. He can find something else if he has to. Just say the word. If you want him gone…”

“No,” Brienne says. “No. Thank you. I’m…I’m touched that you would ask, but no. It’s all right. I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I don’t think…everything is different, now. We barely speak. We barely look at each other. We’ve both moved on. It _isn’t _comfortable, but…I can endure it.”

Catelyn smiles a little sadly, and she takes a long sip from her glass as she thinks about what to say next.

“Two years ago,” she starts. “I spoke to you at your apartment. I told you that I thought I sensed some attachment on Jaime’s part, and you told me what his sister said. That he needed affection from anyone, and that he would start to project on you. You seemed uncertain, and I told you to protect yourself. To make the choice that felt right for you. Judging from the way your friendship ended so suddenly, I’ve always assumed that that’s exactly what happened. I wanted to say that I’m proud of you, for choosing what was right for you. Even if it hurt.”

Brienne smiles. Catelyn’s approval once would have meant the world to her, and in a way it still does. She likes hearing that Catelyn is proud of her. She likes hearing that Catelyn thinks she made the right choice. But…

“I don’t think I _did_ choose what was right for me,” she has to admit. “I think I chose what felt safest. What I was used to. I didn’t believe that Jaime cared for me. How could I? No one ever has before. Not like he claimed to. Cersei primed me for it, but I’m not sure if I would have believed him even if she hadn’t spoken to me. I was so used to being too ugly to be loved.”

“Oh, Brienne,” Catelyn sighs, but Brienne shakes her head.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I think I know better now. I suppose it’s possible that Cersei was right and that Jaime was just too proud to admit it, but…I don’t know. Now I look back, and I remember how nervous he was, and I remember the way I rejected him. I think, if I had been brave enough to take the risk…I don’t know. Even if he did end up leaving me in the end, coming to his senses and finding someone else, someone more beautiful. At least I would have done what I wanted to do. Taken the risk so that I could be proud of myself. I can’t be proud of running. Not even when I thought it was for a good reason. I loved him. Maybe I haven’t stopped, but I don’t know him anymore. He’s a stranger, and that’s my doing. I should have fought harder. Against Cersei, maybe, or my doubts. I should have fought harder for his friendship, if nothing else. I thought he was embarrassed and avoiding me, and I got angry and stopped trying to understand, and now two years have gone by and I’m left with this _space _inside my heart that he’s still occupying, and there’s nowhere for it to go. Protecting myself may have seemed the brave choice from the outside, but it wasn’t. I was just too scared to trust him, and I ruined everything.”

Catelyn sighs, and she leans across the desk to take Brienne’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Brienne,” she says. Brienne refuses to let her tears fall.

“It’s over now,” she says. “We’re different people. It’s just…a regret I have, I suppose. I’m lucky enough to not have many of them. One or two won’t kill me.”

* * *

She realizes as she heads for the door of the office that Catelyn never even brought up Sansa. Well, if Sansa didn’t mention it to her mother, Brienne certainly isn’t going to be the one to do it. She opens the door and…Jaime. He’s standing there, looking up at her. Waiting in the hall on the other side.

Heat flashes across her face, and she searches his expression for anything that might show he heard. He’s blank, maybe a bit startled to see her, and he quickly averts his eyes. Her breathing slows. Good. He didn’t hear.

She hurries past him with a quick nod of acknowledgement that he may not even see, considering his eyes are now so resolutely on his feet. She keeps her walk staid and steady, and she keeps her breathing the same. It’s only when she’s turned a corner and headed for the stairs that she allows the relief to fully fill her. _Thank the gods he didn’t hear_.

On her way down the stairs, she passes Sansa and Margaery, who are whispering to each other in an alcove near the window. Margaery turns and startles when she hears Brienne, already blushing. She giggles a little, giving Brienne a bit of a wave, to which Brienne nods as properly as she can manage. She turns back once and sees Margaery glancing down the hall again, as if to look for Jaime. Sansa puts her hand on Margaery’s arm and tugs it back for attention, and Brienne feels even lighter. It must be Margaery who has true feelings for Jaime. After all, they know each other. And they _do _seem uniquely suited. Sansa must have been looking out for the friend she has become fond of, wanting to know what Jaime was like outside the confines of this roleplay. More relief, then. She hasn’t felt so unburdened in days.

The lightness continues as Brienne makes her way to the ballroom to make sure that Gendry and Lommy and the others are on schedule with the decorations. It’s easier to bear the thought of Jaime and Margaery, mostly because she won’t have to see it every day. If it was Sansa, it would probably be more difficult. She would have to find a way to endure it, and she would have to find a way to be around them together. Or maybe she’d be so dramatic as to move out and avoid _Sansa_, too, protecting her heart by running away _again_. Pushing away a second best friend, hurting someone else to make sure that she avoids as much hurt as possible for herself.

Everything in the ballroom is proceeding nicely. Brienne has always liked the decorations for the ball. Every year, on the last evening of the guests’ stay, Catelyn holds an enormous dance. She busses in all the friends of her children and a bunch of actors from community theaters in the city, and they all dress up in regency-appropriate costumes and dance with each other. They’re all little more than set dressing so that each of the guests can be proposed to by the man who has been fake-wooing them for a week, but Brienne has always _liked _being set dressing. She doesn’t always participate in the ball, but sometimes she needs to, thanks to a last-minute shortage of participants. Jaime’s last year here, she was introduced to the guests as Ms. Stark’s rather gangly cousin, and Jaime kept seeking her out to dance with her. His guest, he claimed, was enjoying dancing with every available man, and so he was going to dance with the person he wanted to dance with. He didn’t mind that she loomed over him and looked ridiculous in her too-short dress. He complimented her on her dancing, which was average, and on her looks, which were worse. She understood suddenly how it must feel to be the women on the receiving end of his brand of intensity. How it must feel to believe, at least for a few hours, that a man that beautiful _wanted _you.

It wasn’t until he lost his hand that she realized she loved him, but surely she must have felt it even then. She remembers the way her heart pounded as he looked up at her. She remembers the way his eyes glittered with mirth as they shared jokes and talked and danced together until Brienne was hardly focusing on the steps at all, simply enjoying his company. How could she _not _have realized that she loved him then?

Once she’s sure the ballroom is in good hands, she heads to the stables, pleased to find that Hodor and Podrick have taken care of everything in her absence. She could just head back into the house and maybe go help the boys with the decorating, but she decides she has earned a few minutes to herself, and she saddles up her favorite mare.

The sun is just barely starting to set when she sets out, but it grows cloudy as she rides. She doesn’t mind. The wind feels good, and she feels apart from everything else in the world. Even when it first begins to drizzle, she loathes the idea of turning back, though she knows she should. She’ll need to wear this footman’s uniform again tomorrow, probably, and she doesn’t want it to get soaked.

* * *

By the time she gets back to the stables, the sunset has begun in earnest, and the rain is really coming down. She’s laughing at the mare’s impatience to be back in her stall, and she takes off her heavy footman’s coat and hangs it to dry, then takes her time rubbing the horse down, murmuring to her comfortingly and thanking her for a lovely ride.

When she’s finally ready to head back inside, she leaves the stall only to find that Jaime is standing just inside the door. Still wearing his ridiculous costume. Soaking wet. Brienne stares at him. If he were shivering a little less, this would seem like the start of some sordid fantasy, but no. It’s real. He’s here. His lips are slightly blue.

“What are you _doing_?” she asks him incredulously. She reaches into the bin of clean towels and shakes one out, hurrying over to him to wrap him in it.

“I was looking for you,” he says. It’s not like it’s the first thing he’s said to her in two years, but it _feels _like it, suddenly. The way he’s looking at her…She has to look away. She rubs his arms a bit before she starts to feel silly and just wraps the blanket around him tighter and retreats, back across the stable.

“I went for a ride,” she says.

“I can see that,” he replies. She looks down at her white shirt and sees how it sticks to her skin. She remembers the way her silly bra showed through her tan top the first time she met him, and it feels almost fitting. She rolls her eyes at him, and he smiles at her. It’s almost all right.

“What did you need?” she asks, and his smile fades slowly. He’s still looking at her, searching, like he can’t figure out how to ask what he needs to.

“I heard you,” he finally says, and Brienne closes her eyes.

“Oh,” she says.

“In Cat’s office.”

“Yes, I understood,” Brienne says. She opens her eyes again. He’s closer now, looking up at her.

“I thought you hated me,” he says. She frowns more deeply, now.

“What? Why would _I_ hate _you_?”

“When I told you I loved you…”

“Jaime…”

“I tried to touch your face, and you…”

“It wasn’t about the _hand_, Jaime,” she insists.

“Well that’s good to know, but I thought it was more about what I told you about me and Cersei.”

Brienne nods, almost relieved to know what it was that ultimate drove him away.

“I only meant that you couldn’t be in love with _me_,” she says.

“I know that now. I heard you in Cat’s office, and it…it made it make sense. I thought you were…I thought I disgusted you, and that you only stuck around because you felt sorry for me.”

“_No_!” Brienne insists. “Gods, this is why you should have answered the phone! I would have talked to you.”

“And I would have thought it was pity for your poor, maimed friend who went and fell in love with someone who thought he was disgusting,” Jaime says wryly. He laughs a little. He’s still standing very close. “I thought two years would be long enough. I thought I’d see you again, and it would all be gone. All the wanting and the longing. I was a fucking idiot. I saw you again and it was like someone punched me in the chest.”

“You did a good job of hiding it,” Brienne says. She can scarcely believe what she’s hearing, but she doesn’t want to disbelieve him again. Not after all the pain it caused last time.

“Did I? I felt like I was drowning.”

“I thought you had moved on completely. I thought I had ruined everything. That there was nothing left inside you for me but apathy.”

“I wished that. So many times, I wished I could stop caring about you, but I couldn’t. All those nights I dreamed of you. All those times I almost texted you, just to see how you were doing. I made Tyrion do it instead. He kept telling me I was wrong, that you cared, but he wasn’t there. He didn’t see your face. He didn’t see what I thought I saw in your expression. I shouldn’t even be _back _here, except I wanted to see you again. I came up with a list of reasons why I should, why I wanted to, but everyone knew it was about you. Tyrion and Cat. Everyone. I haven’t spoken to Cersei beyond what politeness dictates in social settings in two years, Brienne. Nothing has changed for me. I love you as much as I ever have. I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

“I believe you.” She hardly knows it for the truth before she says it, but once she does, she knows it’s true. She sees the hope dawning in his eyes. “I believe you. And I love you now as much as I loved you then.”

Jaime needs no more reassurance than that, it seems. He pushes forward and up onto his toes to kiss her. His lips are cold, and his skin is too, when Brienne cups his jaw and pulls him deeper into the kiss. He’s smiling. She thinks she’s smiling, too, as he overbalances and her back hits the wall behind her, and she laughs when he refuses to break the kiss for long, chasing her still, dropping the blanket so he can grip at her shirt.

“Jaime!” she laughs, wrapping her arms around him. “We need to get you back inside.”

“Only if you’ll come to my room,” he replies. Brienne can’t help but fall speechless. He’s so close, looking up at her. His cheeks are infused with warmth, his eyes are wide and hopeful. She’d never even hoped or begun to imagine something like this.

“All right,” she replies, breathless.

Above them, there’s a muffled sound. A squeak of some kind. Jaime doesn’t appear to hear it, trying to kiss her again, but he catches the underside of her jaw as she looks up, eyes narrowing. It wasn’t too long ago that she used the loft above as a hiding place.

“What is it?” Jaime asks, his voice muffled against her throat as he decides to take her inattention as permission to start working his way down it.

“Someone’s up there,” Brienne says. There are a few beats of silence, and then a familiar giggle.

“Don’t stop on _our _account,” Margaery Tyrell calls.

“Fucking. Hell,” Jaime mutters, and he backs away from Brienne reluctantly as she reaches for the ladder and pulls herself up.

Margaery and Sansa are both grinning at her, both with mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips. Sansa has the good grace to look a bit guilty, but Margaery just lounges proudly, leaning back on one elbow, her eyebrows raised.

“So, uh,” Sansa says. “I told Margaery about the Secret Shopper thing. Like. Right away. And, uh. We’ve kind of been hooking up. And she kind of asked me out. And...oh, gods.”

“We’ve been trying to set you up,” Margaery finishes happily.

“Yeah, that,” Sansa admits.

“Coming up with a grand plan to get Jaime to absolutely _snap _at the ball. Apparently we didn’t need to. You went for a ride in the _rain _and came back all dripping and sexy, and then _Jaime _was all dripping and sexy, and…”

“Yes, thank you. I was here,” Brienne points out impatiently. “I don’t understand. Sansa, why…?”

“Mum said something about the two of you, and you kept saying things like _oh, we were roommates_ with this absolutely _tortured _look on your face! You know I can’t resist these things, Brienne! It was a mystery _and _a romance!”

“_And_, lucky for her, I knew more about it than she did, thanks to Tyrion’s big mouth. So we were plotting. And fucking. Mostly fucking, honestly. We probably would have gotten around to doing something about the two of you a lot faster if we could keep our hands to ourselves, but alas.”

“They were Parent Trapping us,” Jaime says from below, his hands on his hips.

“Well, yes,” Sansa admits. “That _was _the exact phrase we used.”

“Except you aren’t our parents. And we’re definitely not sisters,” Margaery says. “Though _some people _are into that.”

Jaime sighs explosively from below, and Brienne turns to give him a pitying look.

“I really am sorry,” Sansa says quietly, trying to look as innocent as possible.

“Yes, I can see that,” Brienne replies.

“We were facilitating true love,” Margaery says indignantly.

“You were banging in a stable loft,” Jaime shouts.

“Mum was in on it, too,” Sansa says.

* * *

“I know you’re annoyed with them,” Jaime says, awkwardly, while he’s towel-drying his hair and Brienne can’t stop watching him. It doesn’t exactly seem effortless with only one hand, but he’s so much more coordinated than he used to be. Brienne feels another pang of guilt for missing so much. Some deep sadness, some wish that she had been there.

“I’m a bit annoyed with them,” Brienne admits. She has long since changed into her comfortable flannel pants and a tank top, feeling exposed and yet comfortable in Jaime’s big bed. It’ll cause a massive scandal if they’re discovered, but Jaime locked the door and put a chair up against the knob like in the movies, just in case. Neither of them trust Margaery not to send a servant to their door for drama’s sake, and neither of them want to have to write in some stupid infidelity subplot at this point in the game.

“We should at least take comfort in the fact that we didn’t _need _them,” he says, flopping down onto his stomach beside her, on top of the covers, shirtless and still dewy from the shower. Brienne reaches out, because she can, and she traces the familiar shape of his jaw with her fingers. He closes his eyes and leans into it. Turns his head and kisses her palm. She, absurdly, kind of wants to cry.

“I think we _did _need them,” she points out. “Sansa said Cat was involved. She must have arranged for you to be outside the door when she and I were speaking. Would you have said anything to me if you didn’t overhear?”

“Oh, definitely,” Jaime says. She looks at him doubtfully, and he laughs at her. “I was _so close _to snapping. For the past two weeks, easy.”

She’s tempted to call him a liar, but even jokingly, it feels like it might be too soon for that. Instead, she leans in and kisses him. He kisses her back, enthusiastic and smiling against her lips. She already told him that she wanted to take things slowly, at least on the physical front, but she doesn’t mind this.

She takes his stump in her hand, and he breaks the kiss to stare at her.

“I think we should have some groundrules. About doubting each other,” she says. She kisses his wrist, then, the raised scar tissue, and she sees the emotions he can’t quite manage to hide.

“I’ll never doubt you again,” he says, exactly like the Regency Era romantic he always plays, and Brienne feels a certain kind of peace wash over her.

“And I’ll never doubt you,” she promises.

It’s the kind of thing she can’t _really _promise, she knows. She has been given too many reasons over the years to distrust even the people she loves. But it’s a promise she wants to make, and it’s a promise she wants to live up to, and she hasn’t lived two years apart from Jaime to not learn that sometimes _trying _is what it takes.

* * *

She should have known, of course, that Jaime would take _trying_ to an absurd level.

Even while it’s happening, even while she’s mortified, she’s also thinking, _I should have seen this coming_. And she’s…well, she’s mortified, but it’s also an absurd relief on several different levels, because it’s a reminder and it’s proof that she still _does _know him. Because, seriously, it’s _exactly _what Jaime would do.

Catelyn is the one who tells her that she’s going to need to participate in the ball this year, though she blessedly dresses her in an extremely nice navy blue coat with white trim and the khaki pants that Brienne likes so much. The coat, Catelyn reveals, was specially tailored for Brienne by Sansa, and Brienne will be playing the role of Stablemaster of Winterfell Hall, which isn’t really a title and which isn’t usually what Brienne plays anyway.

Again, she should be questioning all of this, but she doesn’t. Maybe Jaime is to blame for _that_, as well, because he’s used every available moment to make up for the lack of conversation over the last two years, and has found every opportunity and every excuse to pull her away, kissing her and telling her little stories about his day, finding dark corners in the estate that Brienne never knew existed.

When the ball begins, everything is normal. Brienne stands with Sam as Sam exchanges flirty glances with Gilly as she dances with Jon. Robb and Jeyne appear to be having an extremely earnest conversation over near the library, which means Robb will be proposing soon. Loras and Renly are dancing with different women while sending each other loaded glances and trying not to laugh. Jaime and Margaery are dancing and chatting while Sansa and Theon stand nearby and snack while apparently rating the dancing of all the other participants. Catelyn lords over all of it, looking beautiful and officious while standing beside Olenna Tyrell, who has herself gotten into costume for this event and seems to be thoroughly enjoying her place as Guest of Honor.

Suddenly, Sam jabs an elbow into Brienne’s side and says, “um? Brienne? Is that supposed to happen?”

Brienne looks, somehow already knowing that it’s going to be Jaime related.

She has trouble figuring out what’s going on at first. Margaery and Jaime look to be arguing, but their voices don’t carry, and there’s something almost cartoonish about the way they’re speaking to each other. There’s a lot of arm waving and a lot of harsh whispers. Margaery looks like she’s trying to kiss him, and Jaime turns her away. People are starting to notice. Brienne looks at Catelyn and sees that Catelyn is just wearing an amused smile, watching them. Letting this happen. Brienne catches her eye, and Catelyn smiles wider, and now there are true alarm bells going off in Brienne’s mind.

“I’m going to kill him,” she decides.

“Uh oh,” Sam replies, pointing again, and Brienne sees that Jaime is storming towards her. Margaery is pretending to sob. Sansa is going to her side, pulling her into a hug, and Jaime is smiling broadly, wider and wider when he sees the warning look on her face.

“Lady Brienne,” he says.

“Stablemaster Brienne,” she corrects. “What the _fuck _are you doing?”

“Hardly appropriate language for a lady,” Jaime says with a pleased sigh that pretends at being displeased. “Perhaps that is why I can’t stop thinking about you.”

They’ve gathered an audience now. Most of it confused. Some of it delighted. Sam is clapping quietly, looking giddy, bouncing on his toes like a child. Brienne feels very confused and very apart from her own body. What exactly does he think he’s doing? They’ve already admitted to loving one another. They’ve already decided to give this a real chance. She has never been the kind of person who requires big gestures like this. She has _wished _for them, of course, but that doesn’t mean she needs them.

“What are you _doing_?” she asks softly. Jaime only smiles at her.

“These past weeks, as I was meant to be wooing Ms. Tyrell, all I could think about was you. And the summers we shared here years ago, before we were separated by rank and station.”

“This is ridiculous,” Brienne says.

“But I have never stopped caring for you. I have never stopped loving you. Even the most innocent touch as you saddled my horse for me…”

“I’m going to _murder _you.”

“…was enough to bring me back to more innocent days. I cared too much in the past for what my family thought of me. Of us. And I believe you did the same.” He arches an eyebrow at her, pointed, and she rolls her eyes, which makes him break character a bit and stifle a chuckle. “I know that my family and Ms. Tyrell’s family all expect me to do my duty and make an offer. Unite our houses. But I have never been a creature of rationality. I am a creature of love, and I do love you.”

He sinks to one knee, and Brienne has a moment of sheer, blinding panic. What the _fuck is he doing_? But he sets her at ease with a small smile. Private and pointed again. _Do you trust me_? it asks. She nods.

The box he pulls from his pocket is larger than a ring box would be, and it sets her at ease, though she is still tense with confusion and with the feeling of so many eyes on her. Not everyone at the ball, thank the gods, but enough people in the immediate area, and she wonders what they see. People from outside the estate, they must think it part of the script. But her fellow employees, the ones who have known she and Jaime for long enough, what are they thinking? Do they look at Brienne and Jaime and see something impossible? Or does it make _sense_, maybe, to the ones who know them best?

Jaime opens the box, and Brienne laughs, startled by the sight of what’s inside. Her eyes fill with tears, too, and she knows she’ll be embarrassed about that later.

On the ivory silk surface lies a beat-up key, that purple leopard print that Jaime got her as a joke years ago.

“Come home, Brienne. Please,” Jaime says, smiling up at her, entirely too happy with himself for pulling this off. She takes the key from the box, and she curls her fingers around it. Familiar, like something that had been missing.

“Yes,” she says. As her vision blurs behind the gathering tears, she still is struck by the force of his smile. 


End file.
